Are you paying through the nose for a 1st position that isn't worth it? A controversial debate…

According to ThinkMetrics, a web analytics company, the top Google ad position "isn't worth it any more". In an article published January 2007, ThinkMetrics CEO Brandt Dainow originates a ruthlessly disruptive meme:

"There is no relationship between the position of an advertisement in the Google Ad listings and the chance of that ad being clicked on. Bidding more per visitor in order to get a higher position will not get you more visitors. The number one position in the listings is not the best position. No ad position is any better than any other. The factor which has the most bearing on your chance of being clicked on is the text in your ad, not the ad's position."

This observation emerges, says Dainow, from his analysis of about five million ad impressions generating around 40,000 clicks over four years, running mainly in the UK. Dainow believes that although top ad positions may have been favoured by searchers in years past, people are now more sophisticated consumers of ad content and no longer blindly click on the top positions.

Yahoo! refutes conclusions

It has to be said that ThinkMetrics' observations fly in the face of received search wisdom. As Kevin Wilk, Yahoo! Search Marketing's Director of Agency Development puts it in his rejection of the ThinkMetrics findings — Rank Does Matter : "… multiple studies, organic data and client feedback refute this theory."

Amongst Wilk's counterarguments:

• Searchers have become conditioned to expecting the most relevant results within the first few listings [see our note on the Golden Triangle study]
• An eMarketer study suggesting that 37 percent of searchers spend less than 15 seconds doing a quick scan and determining which of the first four returns pops out at them.
• Internal Yahoo! studies on observed clickthrough rates.