More than one-half of the US online retailers surveyed by NetElixir and the e-tailing group in October 2007 said that up to 40% of their orders now come from pay-per-click marketing.
As a result, nearly nine in 10 said they planned to increase their PPC budgets in 2008, with 30% planning increases of 26% or more, according to the survey results published in NetElixir's "E-tailer Pay-Per-Click Stress Study."
"Although merchants are getting more seasoned and
innovative, knowledge levels and sophistication required to maintain
and grow this valuable area can be stressful," said Lauren Freedman, president of the e-tailing group, in a statement.
Nearly eight in 10 online merchants said they mainly used return on investment to decide how well PPC worked.
Still, many search marketers find that measuring PPC ROI is difficult. Nearly three in 10 US search marketers in a
MarketingSherpa study, also published in October 2007, rated PPC as "highly variable" in its ROI, making it more of a question mark than any other marketing tactic in the survey.
Learn how other marketers measure search success. Read
eMarketer's Search Marketing: Counting Dollars and Clicks report.