Wednesday, December 08, 2004

A dime per search

John Battelle posts incredible numbers on the performance of Google AdWords:
  • Average payment per click on a Google ad is $.54.
  • Nearly 17% of searches end in a click on an ad.
Combining these two pieces of data, it appears Google makes $.09 per search.

That's right. Every search you do on Google generates nearly a dime of revenue for the company.

Impressive numbers. And they're only expected to go higher as demand for internet advertising increases.

Google has firmly established that relevant, useful, and unobnoxious advertising can be stunningly lucrative.

Update: John Battelle reports that the latest numbers (Oct 2005) from Google show a 33% increase, now $0.12 per search. Impressive.

2 comments:

Greg Linden said...

Good point, Maarten. I was a little loose with my language. I should have said, "On average, every search you do on Google generates a dime..."

Your experience may differ, but I find I click on Google ads fairly frequently. When I'm searching for specific products, the ads sometimes seem more relevant than the search results.

Seun Osewa said...

I don't click on ads because, frankly, even if I were to click on the ads, and had millions in my bank account, I would not be able to buy the products.

"Sorry, Seun, wrong country. In your next life, ask specifically not to be born in Nigeria"