Chapter 25. Media Site: Lines in the Sand

Click-Through Rates

(Click-through rates also apply to UGC sites)

A well-placed, relevant ad will get clicked more, but no matter what, ads are a numbers game: even the best ads seldom get as much as 5% click-through rates.

A May 2012 study by CPC Strategy listed the top 10 comparative shopping sites, along with their click-through rates where applicable (Bing and TheFind don’t charge for clicks).[122] See Table 25-1.

Table 25-1. Top 10 comparative shopping sites

Comparison shopping engine

Conversion rate

Cost-per-click rate

Google

2.78%

Too early to know[a]

Nextag

2.06%

$0.43

Pronto

1.97%

$0.45

PriceGrabber

1.75%

$0.27

Shopping.com

1.71%

$0.34

Amazon Product Ads

1.60%

$0.35

Become

1.57%

$0.45

Shopzilla

1.43%

$0.35

Bing

1.35%

N/A

TheFind

0.71%

N/A

Global search marketing agency Covario reported in 2010 that the average click-through rate for paid search, worldwide, was 2% (see Table 25-2).

Table 25-2. Average click-through rate for paid search

Bing

2.8%

Google

2.5%

Yahoo!

1.4%

Yandex

1.3%

Affiliate marketer Titus Hoskins says that 5–10% of the visitors he sends to Amazon ultimately buy something, and that this is significantly higher than revenues from competing affiliate platforms.[123] Amazon and other general-purpose retailers also reward affiliate partners more handsomely than some more narrowly focused companies, because an affiliate referrer gets a percentage of the entire shopping cart. So if ...

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