Databases Reference
In-Depth Information
As you can see in
Figure 4.5
, the searcher has some motivation concerning a
searching need and therefore is aware of this need. The searchers starts to attend to
the environment in relation to this awareness. The perception aspects of the search
are alerts that happen after the searcher enters the query. The choice set is the set of
results displayed to the searcher in response to the searcher's query. As the searcher
begins to scan the advertisement, the searcher is alerted to signals for which ads are
relevant [
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] and which ones, in chunks, can be discarded. Based on some cognitive
analysis, the searcher makes a selection of which ad to click on. At this point, the
searcher transitions from the role of searcher to the role of potential customer, given
that the ad is a gateway to a location where he or she can access the product or ser-
vice. The ad, as a gateway, contains certain attributes that the searcher recognizes as
signals, including the rank of the ad itself.
Foundational Takeaways
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The basis of advertisement signaling theory, where you want the ad to contain rel-
evant signals or clues for the searcher. Signals are indicators to the searcher that
the advertisement is not noise.
The typical searcher will not expend a lot of energy searching for information,
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will access the information that is easiest to get, and will take action to limit the
number of choices. This is noted in the portion of the SERP that the searcher will
examine and in the number of advertisements that the searcher will click on.
Based on serial positioning theory, rank is a large determinant of the number of
•
clicks that an advertisement will receive, regardless of the signals contained within
the ad. Although conversion rates seem to hold pretty steady regardless of rank, the
conversion potential drops significantly with each drop in rank down the listing.
Relating Theory to Practice
Your advertisements are signals or clues for the searcher who you want to become
a potential customer. This is why we often refer to advertisements as guideposts for
searchers, who may be going through different information-processing states and
therefore attending to different signals.
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Given your product or service, what are different versions of an ad that you can
write that address different information-processing aspects? What keyphrases
would you select based on your potential customers? What signals are your adver-
tisements providing?
You are not the only advertiser bidding on these keyphrases. Using the theory of
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just-notable differences, what do you have to do to your ads to make them notably
different from others?
Based on data from one of your campaigns, model your search campaigns based
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on cost, clicks, conversions, and rank. Then, using the conversion potential
formula and the data from one of your sponsored-search efforts, calculate the
