Year over year sales picked up with search engine marketing jumped 70 percent in the first quarter of 2006.
The Performics Q1 Search Trend Report showed campaign size and cost each grew 40 percent, and that yielded what Performics called the strongest return on investment for search advertisers in 15 months.
“The growing gap between spend and sales indicates that advertisers are making smarter decisions about how to maximize their search marketing spend,” Performics president Stuart Frankel said in a statement.
Online consumer behavior varied between the fourth quarter 2005 holiday period and the first quarter of 2006 that followed when it came to clicking on ads.
Pricier generic terms for categories grabbed a lot of clicks during the holiday shopping season. Those clicks cost more than the specific keywords consumers clicked during the first quarter.
“Shoppers in the fourth quarter were buying for others and although they knew they were going to purchase something, they weren’t necessarily sure what,” said Frankel.
“However, in the first quarter, when shoppers were buying for themselves, they had likely already narrowed down the options, and therefore were searching with more specific terms.”
Fewer keywords were priced over $1.00 at the end of Q1 2006 than at the end of Q4 2005. Seven percent of keywords cost above a dollar in the fourth quarter. That dropped to five percent in the first quarter.
People seem to be clicking on a wider variety of keywords, according to the report. Performics said keyword growth is outpacing the clicks people make. More details may be found in the full Performics 50 report online.
—
Tag:
Add to 
Bookmark Murdok: 
David Utter is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business.
