Do People Click the Sponsored Results (PPC)?
In a study from PennState, they studied 56 participants from 18 to 29 years old (the demographic most targeted by marketers) to examine various search engine results.
In one part of the study, they flipped the organic search results and the sponsored results (so, the user would feel he/she was viewing opposite results) and the researchers found out:
…on more than 80 percent of the searches, study participants went first to the results identified as “organic.” Sponsored links were viewed first for only six percent of the time.
And researchers also noticed that:
While study participants rated 52 percent of the organic results as “relevant,” searchers described 42 percent of sponsored links as “relevant” even though both sets of results were identical. That 10-percent spread reflects a significant degree of bias against sponsored links, Jansen said.
This 10-percent bias also may reflect (or become noticed) when the individual searcher may feel less obligated to purchase from the marketer. If you’ve ever searched with DogPile or any other InfoSpace sponsored metasearch engine, you may have noticed that they essentially hide their advertisements within the search results — here’s an example:
Fig. An example search for “free” on DogPile.
If can see that small, under search results 2 and 5, you can see the text, “Sponsored by:” & “ [Found on Ads by Google]” by the URL for both of these results. Actually out of the 20 results they display, 6 of them were sponsored.
To examine beyond this study, I took a peek into the MultiZ/Google search logs. I looked from May 20, 2005 (when the original MultiZ came out) to October 16, 2007:
Percent Click Rate: 0.85%
0.85% shows and certainly reflects that bias. It is truly doubtful in my mind that 99.15% of the sponsored results are irrelevant. However, I hardly click any of those advertisements either. 
Update: For this year (Jan. 1, 2007 - Oct. 17, 2007) — the rate has gone up to 2.45%. And that’s a 288% increase. 
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Filed under: Studies, Search Engines