In a win for small business, more people are clicking on Google ads and average prices are going down, according to an analysis of over $US1 billion in advertising spending.
American company Wordstream has delved into Google’s latest advertising data and the results are good news for SMEs – and they also deliver a key insight into who’s advertising the most in what categories.
State Farm took out the biggest advertiser spot for finance, the most expensive AdWords category, while Expedia, Amazon, AT&T and Best Buy have also been pinned as major spenders.
In the last quarter, says Wordstream founder Larry Kim, the average cost per click for ads has declined 16.5% for Google Search, and 18.2% for the Google Display Network.
And while click-through rates have declined, offsetting that is a large growth in ad impressions and clicks, up 21.6% for Google Search and 29.1% for the Google Display Network.
This simply means there are more people clicking through ads; which brings the price down. As Kim explains, this is a good move for small business as it opens up search marketing to new clients.
“[It is now] including perhaps advertisers for whom the economics of search might not have previously worked out at higher average costs-per-click.”
Some of the other findings from the analysis show average cost-per-clicks are higher in the finance industry, with over $3 per click in the search network.
Shopping has the highest click-through rate at 5.23%, followed by travel at 4.88%, while the jobs and education sectors have the highest conversation rates at 6.27%.
Wordstream has put together an infographic of some of the biggest findings from Google’s latest data, taken from the AdWords Performance Grader. Make sure to study it – it gives some good insight into the numbers behind Google’s $US100 million a day search advertising program.
Patrick Stafford is a freelance journalist and a former deputy editor of SmartCompany.
