How Much is One PPC B2C Click Worth?
Posted by Jeff Demers on Thu, Jan 28, 2010 @ 01:30 PM
The U.S. company
Adgooroo released an interesting report about search engine advertising in the last quarter 2009. It makes compelling reading. When looking at the most expensive keywords on the three search engines, we see interesting differences. Each engine has clusters of expensive keywords - and they are, interesting enough, not the same (or even similar).
Let's look at Google first.
Mesothelioma is a form of cancer that is almost always caused by exposure to asbestos. It is a major health-concern, especially in the United States. The chief advertisers are law firms driving visitors to thinly veiled "informational sites" in the hopes of garnering contact information. The cost per click for these terms is astounding, look at the maximum cost-per-click (CPC) of related keywords in Q4 of 2009:
- Mesothelioma $99.44
- Asbestos law suits $78.10
- Asbestos law firm $67.97
- Mesothelioma $67.37
- Asbestos law firms $65.03
Yes, this means if you Google "Mesothelioma" and click on the top listing you could be costing someone up to $99.44 for one SINGLE click. Another cluster of expensive keywords relates to business and marketing. "Pop up display booths" at $72.53 and "trade show pop up" at $60.27 rank high as do "conference calling companies" at $75.29, "800 conference calling" at $52.23, and "qwest conference calling" at $49.54. The rest of the high-ranking keywords are mainly relating to (re)financing, loans and insurance.
Now, let's take a closer look at Yahoo!
The leader of the keyword pack is "Lloyds tsb insurance" with a maximum CPC in Q4 of 2009 of $53.44 with "Lloyds insurance" in third-place at $44.58. Yahoo is more popular in the UK than domestically, which also explains the ranking of "british gas" $21.45 and NatWest banking services -- "natwest car insurance" at $32.84, natwest insurance at $24.31, and "natwest credit card" at $20.23. Yahoo! users obviously like sending flowers ("800 flowers" at $24.82 and "1800 flowers" at $22.94) as well as entertainment ("love film" at $40.20 and "tickets now.com" at $30.29).
Last, but not least, search engine Bing also shows us different keyword-clusters. The highest-ranked keywords in Q4 of 2009 relate to education and students:
- Low apr student credit card $54.24
- Accounting degrees $54.02
- Student credit card application $51.39
- Online masters degrees $44.07
- Online masters degree $43.56
- Nursing degrees $42.74
The rest of the high-ranking keywords mainly concern (car) insurance, online stock-trading, and FTD (Florists' Transworld Delivery).
One practical take away for B2C advertisers is that if you're in the legal, insurance, lending or telecom business and are trying to find clients or end users/buyers be prepared to spend a pretty penny on clicks. If you're in the B2B world, targeting business buyers on niche industry terms, you can expect to pay much lower costs - namely, anywhere from a few cents to a few dollars for a click on Google. While on both Yahoo! and Bing's PPC platforms, B2B advertisers can expect very limited competition.