Marketers Allocate One-fifth of Marketing Budgets to Pay-per-click Search Campaigns

Pay-per-click (PPC) marketing campaigns consume a significant portion of marketing budgets. For instance, 44 percent of e-commerce executives said they allocate 20 percent of their entire advertising budgets to PPC campaigns, according to a recent study conducted by e-commerce consultancy the e-tailing group and PPC search manager NetElixir. Additionally, 40 percent of survey respondents manage more than 5,000 keywords. Other data revealed by the study:

• 100 percent of respondents invest in Google PPC campaigns;
• 90 percent invest in Yahoo! PPC campaigns;
• 76 percent invest in MSN PPC campaigns; and
• 27 percent invest in Ask.com PPC campaigns.

Staffing solutions for PPC management are mixed, with 59 percent managing PPC campaigns internally, 18 percent outsourcing all PPC management and 24 percent using a combination of internal and outsourced solutions. Other staffing data uncovered in the survey:

• 99 percent of respondents who manage PPC campaigns in-house have three or fewer people working on the project:
• 33 percent spend 21 or more hours per week managing PPC campaigns; and
• 32 percent spend 5 or fewer hours per week managing PPC campaigns.

Source: the e-tailing group’s and NetElixir’s “1st Annual E-tailer PPC Stress Study.” For more information on the study, please contact Lauren Freedman, president of the e-tailing group at lf@e-tailing.com.