Traditional Agencies Just Don't Get Paid Search

My buddy Bill found these insightful gems from a traditional agency regarding what works and what doesn't work in paid search.

Some people still don't get it. Incredible.

"We've seen a shift in perception and performance. We were bullish on the idea [PPC] originally, but disappointed with the results out of the gates," said Ron Belanger, VP of search marketing at Carat Interactive. "We expected traditional search conversion rates, but what we got was much lower."

What? You are in a unique category. Conversion rates in PPC ads are on average 10 t0 20 times higher.

This one is priceless:

“Some advertisers have found contextual ads to be useful in certain situations, for certain clients, or when used in certain ways…”

Huh? I have no idea what this means...

Bill says, "I would like to see some of this data:"

“Goodman said he includes contextual ads as part of the mix for 75 percent of his clients. In his experience, the core keywords that perform best in search are the ones that perform worst in contextual. In contrast, Goodman said the "tail words" -- keywords that have less volume but still draw incremental traffic -- can perform more than 200 times better in contextual than in search, in some cases.”

Brilliant! This guy deserves a medal:

"Sell as much as you can, as cheaply as you can, and when you exhaust that channel, you move to the next."

For more ridiculous insights, go here:

http://www.clickz.com/news/article.php/3488886