Search campaigns grew fast from March 2005 and March 2006, but sales from those search efforts grew even faster, according to the Q1 2006 Search Trend Report from online marketing firm Performics.
The report, based on an ongoing index of actively managed search campaigns among Performics’ top 50 search marketing clients, found that while those advertisers increased both the size of and the budgets for their search campaigns by almost 40% between Q1 2005 and Q1 2006, their year-over-year sales saw an aggregate 70% increase.
That made the return on investment by search advertisers in March stronger than at any time during the previous 15 months, according to Stuart Frankel, president of Performics, a division of DoubleClick. “The growing gap between spend and sales indicates that advertisers are making smarter decisions about how to maximize their search marketing spend,” Frankel said in a statement accompanying the report.
Other findings in the report included a less significant role for higher-priced search terms in Q1 compared to the 2005 holiday shopping quarter. The percentage of keywords priced above $1 a click fell from 7% at the end of fourth-quarter 2005 to 5% at the end of first-quarter 2006. Clicks on those costly terms fell even more, from 11% in Q4 2005 to 4% in Q1 2006.
And while 30% of clicks came on keywords priced at 50 cents or more in December 2005, that price category accounted for less than 20% of clicks in March 2006.
