Change of Heart

Before reading the lecture notes for this week’s discussion, if someone had asked me what I thought about Paid Search, and I would have told you that as a consumer I thought they were annoying and as an advertiser in my particular field they were unnecessary. We were asked to discuss what value Paid Search may have as part of our homework this week, which at first I would have said not much; however, I started digging deeper into the material and made some conclusions which told me my initial inclinations may have been slightly off.

Some products or services are a good fit for Paid Search. For instance, a widely demanded product, like clothing, would extract a higher value from Paid Search. Why? Paid Search would be advantageous for that company if their organic SEO is not great (leaving them further down the results page) and if they are competing against a wide range of other companies. Paid Search is also good because it offers actual metrics to measure ROI, something that print advertising cannot. The most important advantage that I discovered this week, is that people are finding your ad because they are actively searching for your product. Jeremy Hull pointed this out in his article titled “What’s the Value of a Paid Search Impression?” 

It has been difficult for me to accept that Paid Search is truly a valuable tool, but Hull’s point that this is a way to connect with people who are actively searching for your product has made me switch my viewpoint. I agree that print advertising not only can you not measure true ROI, but you are also working extremely hard to get the attention and inspire action from a passive consumer. With a Google search, for instance, a person is specifically looking for the product or service you offer, therefore, it makes much more sense to use a Paid Search.

So, although I don’t believe Paid Search should be the only avenue to market a product or service, I now see that it can be valuable in certain situations. One company that is relying on Paid Search, though, is Google. During my research I found this chart by Dan Frommer at SplatF.  Dan researched which companies most heavily rely on one particular product. It shocked me to see that Google receives 97% of its revenue from Adwords. Even though it may not be the best marketing strategy for a company to put all its “eggs in one basket” with Paid Search, it is seemingly working well for Google to rely on for revenue!