Home > PPC Myth Busting! Myth 8: Ads Should Always Be In The Top 3
KariSean

PPC Myth Busting! Myth 8: Ads Should Always Be In The Top 3

This is another one that I’ve been guilty of myself: thinking that ads should be in the top 3 ad positions at all times. Thinking the top three positions is the only place you can see good returns is a total myth. One that I plan on bustin’!

When you log in and see ad positions in 4s and 5s or lower, you think “ack! I’m buried on the side or on page 2! No one can even see me!” But, in reality, you should let the data tell you what the best ad position is.

Sean Quadlin did a nice tutorial video blog on how to use pivot tables to find your account’s optimal average position. Since he’ll be helping me out today, you can see above that I’ve ‘shopped him to look like Kari Byron, Adam & Jamie’s sultry sidekick on MythBusters.  The method my sultry sidekick uses in that tutorial lets you use data to tell you what’s best, not some dumb myth! So, I followed Sean’s tutorial for an account, and I came out with this screenshot here:

You can see on the left is my avg. position, which is segmented over 90 days by week for one campaign in the account. While my CTR very much increased with avg. position, my conversion rate and cost/conv was most optimal in the range of position 5.2 to 6.2. You can add whatever you want to this. So, maybe I want to factor in the number of conversions as well if volume is more important than cost/conv.  Maybe I want to do this by every half position to get more segmented. It’s up to you, but the point here is that top 3 isn’t always the best for your account, and you have to do some analysis to let the data do the decision making on what ad position you want to target.

Didn’t get your myth bustin’ fill? Try out our previous 7 myths!

Analytics is complicated to use

Display is really expensive

Display is terrible for direct response

adCenter isn’t worth my time

Broad Match isn’t worth pursuing

Quality Score is all about CTR

Tablet performs like desktop

September 20, 2012

About the Author

Amanda @Amanda_WestBook

Amanda is an Account Executive at Hanapin Marketing, a search engine marketing firm focused on generating results through pay-per-click advertising.
  • Curtis Worthington

    Hi Amanda, great post. My campaigns are optimised for calls meaning that the sheer volume of traffic we receive from the top three positions far out way the lower ads, when aiming for calls. I wouldn’t say this is myth busted as there are many different factors that can be taken into account, however you are definitely right about ensuring testing is done otherwise you could just be wasting money by having a high ROI.

  • Mike Peters

    When doing position analysis it is important to remember that most of Google’s extensions don’t show up unless you’re in the top 3 results. If those extensions are important to your campaign this myth might be fact :)

  • Lauren

    Definitely doesn’t bust the myth for me! Even though Google says they normalize for position, I’d bet with the significantly lower CTR that your quality scores would drop eventually, resulting in higher CPC’s (not to mention the potentially huge losses in impression share). And yes, for my ecommerce site volume is going to be more important than Cost/Conv every day of the week. I understand the importance of this analysis and obviously everyone has different goals, but without knowing how many clicks / conversions this data is based on, it definitely isn’t busting any myths for me.

  • http://twitter.com/sw_cook Steve Cook

    For many, if not most, businesses, the key factor is not cost of conversions, rather volume of conversions. While the ads that are positioned lower may have a lower cost per conversion, they may result in far fewer conversions, perhaps even by an order of magnitude. As such, many businesses may receive more benefit, despite the higher cost per conversion, by generating far more conversions at a higher cost per conversion. It seems that what constitutes “optimization,” may well be in the eye of the beholder.

    • Sam Owen

      Steve, surely this does not hold true if your options are:

      1. Drive 1 million sales but make a loss of $10 on each sale, or

      2. Drive 100,000 sales but make a profit of $10 on each sale.

      Revenue is vanity, profit is sanity.

  • http://www.facebook.com/poi.diaz Poi Diaz

    I would like to note that having your ads in position 4-6 may lower your volumes and thus lower total conversions in general so this is not 100% myth busted for me.

  • Alex Blum

    Amanda, I wonder how this test will look when google starts adding some extension possibilities to the right hand side bar. This could greatly effect the top 3 positions. However it is important to not that holding in the top 3 positions does provide volume which has already been said but it also prevents competition from getting that volume as well. Depending on a companies structure maintaining in the top 3 may actually be the most cost effective practice. Also I just love pivot tables!

    Alex Blum
    Social Media Strategist
    Mojo-ad.com

  • Tim

    I find a number of clients are concerned with brand awareness as well as number of conversions from clicks. Often there is a specific competitor they don’t want to be showing above their ads, and bidding for higher placement all contributes to branding for them. While I would ultimately point them to the cost for actual conversions, when working alongside a client to meet their goals brand awareness is important to consider.