CPC Up and CTR Down

23rd June, 2009

I read with interest today some news from the IPA (Institute of Practitioners of Advertising) regarding the IPA's Search Group update of its analysis of search brand terms.

The analysis seems to show a continuing trend of declining Click Through Rates (CTR) on Google's paid search advertising but increasing for Cost Per Click (CPC). A consistent set of data, from January 2008 to March 2009, submitted by 12 agencies about 47 brands shows that the average CTR has declined from around 40% to around 20% average Cost Per Click has increased from 6p to 29p.

I have long felt that paid search advertising or pay per click (PPC) has had it's time and this new data seems to back up my hunch. As a business we dabbled in PPC a few years ago but without any success and so moved on to the more labourious but far more fruitful Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). In the past 2 years we have seen our site appear on the first page of Google for most of our key services and as a consequence our enquiry level has increased dramatically too.

If all this just seems like mumbo jumbo to you and your website just isn't performing then give us a call and we'll happily explain how you can improve things.

Jason Edge