Went to a great event last week, Chinwag Live! Where the great and the good were discussing Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising on a panel, expertly moderated by Mike Butcher. One of the panellists was Nigel Leggatt from Microsoft who obviously came in for some stick as the man from the big company.
Fair play to Nigel though (Google and Yahoo were invited but declined), he admitted that although the launch of Adcenter wasn’t perfect, that they had a long way to go but that than despite their lower than anticipated volumes, that their click through rates were better than the competition. This was borne out by the agency bods both on the panel and around the room.
What was interesting was that the highest value referrals were from content sites where there was a noticeable difference in user behaviour. These users spent less time on MSN and clicked through faster to the customer site, Microsoft’s analysis being that they were much further down the buying path having researched the products thoroughly.
Common sense you might think but what’s interesting about this to me is why the major retailers haven’t latched on to this. Finding a retailer site that has quality content linked to their products is an almost impossible task.
Mothercare do a decent job, as do Comet with their Knowledge Centre but they are in the minority in an area where you would expect the retailers to be strong. They have experts in pretty much whatever field they operate in, have access to all the manufacturer research and content and the ability to deliver the products. They are as independent as any editorial team (promotions notwithstanding) and should be a valuable, trusted source of information before making a product choice.
Until they get it, the niche content providers are having a great time filling a gap but how long until the Wal-Mart’s, Tesco’s and other high street names cotton on and start driving their own traffic via editorial content through to the purchasing point?
