By: David Rodnitzky

David Rodnitzky — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 01:12:03 +0000

I think that's my problem with this data – it is making a conclusion that is supposed to apply equally to all advertisers in all verticals. That would be like assuming that consumers act the same way when they are buying a luxury yacht versus signing up for a free newsletter – you can't make blanket statements that fit all like that.

By: tdwhalen

tdwhalen — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 20:23:38 +0000

David, I think you are probably on to something with your idea to parse by keyword length.Overall, I think you need an absolute TON of data to look at this – I don’t know of many agencies outside of maybe EF that have enough data. Part of the reason you need a ton of data for this is that you have to negate all the other reasons for changes in conversion rates, including ad rotation, changes on the landing page or to the funnel, conversion tracking changes, etc. With enough data from enough different accounts all the other variables can kind of cancel themselves out. But with smaller datasets, you’re likely to come to erroneous conclusions.In addition, I think the only data that really matters is the data of the specific advertiser. It may be true that in aggregate, conversion rates don’t vary a whole lot by ad position. But for specific advertisers, or possibly for specific categories, this may not be true. The problem is that for specific advertisers, there usually isn’t enough data from the account to form any conclusions about conversion rate by ad position.

Comments on: Conversion Rates Don’t Vary by Position, You Say?

By: David Rodnitzky

By: tdwhalen