ComScore Launches Competitive Search Reports
ComScore Media Metrix has launched a new service that will provide search marketers with reports that compare the effectiveness of their keyword strategies and tactics with those of their major competitors.
To showcase the service, the Web measurement company ran a demo analysis of search campaigns conducted by popular online travel agencies Expedia.com, Orbitz.com, Travelocity.com and CheapTickets.com.
The analysis showed that more than 50% of the clickthroughs to these sites came from paid search ads, compared to 11% for general Web activity. Orbitz.com and CheapTickets.com led the search-marketing pack with 72% of clicks from sponsored ads. But comScore’s analysis suggested that Travelocity is the best optimized pay-per-click (PPC) advertiser with a 6.5% clickthrough rate, higher than the 4% to 5% average for the online travel group as a whole.
The comScore report also indicated that Yahoo! was the preferred engine for sponsored ad campaigns from the online travel agencies in April, garnering almost 44% of the pay-per-click placements from the group. But Google’s slightly higher PPC clickthrough rate for online travel ads in the same month suggested better ad relevance, comScore said.
