The Psychology of Ad Position

Do you really need to be in the top 3 anymore?

[netmeg]

How important is it to be in the top three spots anymore? I've begun doing some experimenting with deliberately pricing my ads so that they fall somewhere in the top 8, but in the 4-8 positions, rather than on top. On the past five days since I've implemented this, I seem to be getting two to three times more clicks and spending about the same (or even less) money. My conversion rate is pretty much the same - maybe slightly higher, but I don't know if I can attribute that last to the positioning.

The reason I started thinking about this is that it occurred to me that when *I* look at the ads in Google now, I don't just look (or click) on the top ones, I look all the way down the list before fishing out the most likely ones. But I don't know if that is becoming common behavior, or just something I do because I'm in the other end of the PPC business as well.

Of course, the fact that the top positions get resold to AOL and other sites is a pretty strong argument for maintaining a presence on top - I'm not even sure if it's still limited to the top three or if they go down further now.

(I haven't used the new positioning tool - from what I read in the docs about it, it seems too imprecise for what I want)

Just wondering what others think...?

[humblebeginnings]

I never cared about the #1 position.
Good ads + good keywords + good targeting is way more important!

[deep_alley]

How long do you plan to run the experiment netmeg?
What I'm surprised about is the click volume. 2-3 times the more clicks is the total opposite of what I would have expected.
Well I would have assumed that conversion rates for lower positioned ads would be higher (if your keywords and ad are relevant), as people who actaully clicked a lower position ad are actually reading the ads and click or not finding what they are looking for elsewhere on the page, etc. Of course a lot depends on the advertisers on the top and the organic listings too.

[DamonHD]

Hi,

Well, I've just set position preference for some ads that I'm very price-sensitive on.

I've excluded the top position since I often don't even notice it myself when searching, and I've excluded very low positions as simply diluting my CTR. I seem to be getting positive results so far, but I'm <24hrs into this experiment.

Rgds

Damon

[netmeg]

Since it seems to be working, I'm going to keep running it on the one account I first implemented, and then test it out on some of the others.

The problem I have is a page that for whatever reasons, doesn't convert terribly well anymore. We have to work on that, but in the meantime, it doesn't make sense to pay huge top-three-spot CPCs for clicks that aren't converting as well as we'd like. It seems to me that as long as I keep position on the first page (i.e. #8 or above) I get about the same conversion rate; the CPC is less than half - and because my daily budget isn't being eaten up so quickly that it runs out before the end of the day, I am getting about three times as many clicks. Net result seems to be more sales for less cost.