Hey. I'm making a decision on whether to offer Google Checkout as a payment method in an e-commerce website my company is developing. One of the advantages of doing so will be having the Google Checkout icon in my pay per click ad. Does anyone have any numbers on the improvement (or lack of) in CTR when the Google Checkout icon starting appearing with your AdWords ad? Thanks.
No, but I think it would be a good idea to test it out. I would imagine in most markets, it would increase CTR.
my eyes are drawn to those icons so i would have to assume that it draws everyones eyes. i.e. draws them to your ad.
AdSense doesn't have anything to do with my question. I'm talking about advertising my Checkout-enabled website with AdWords.
I just implemented Google Checkout and we do get some orders from it. People with gmail accounts use it more.
OK, but if you implement Google Checkout and advertise via Adwords, your ads with the Google Checkout icon could show on my site with Adsense. If the CTR on my site jumps by 10% or more, my site will get banned. Not sure this has anything to do with what you were looking for, but the connection is there.
We're you using AdWords before you implemented Google Checkout? If so, have you seen a difference in your CTR for ads that display the Checkout badge? First, I'm pretty sure the Google Checkout icon will not appear on AdWords ads being displayed in the content network. I think they only show up on Google and its search network. Second, even if I'm wrong this is not what I'm asking about.
There is a google checkout icon on content ads, but it's just a little 'shopping cart/trolley' next to the headline rather than the coloured button at the bottom that appears on the search.
Huligan, the cart icon DOES appear on the content network, it is just not the same as the colourful icon on the actual search result pages. Where are you getting the 10% CTR ban from? I have MANY sites with an adsense CTR of over 40% and have never been banned. That is a myth and something that is costing you dearly.
This has been a debate for a while, I would be inclined to say that CTR does go up but not because of the reasons stated here, but because Google shares google checkout enabled sites more often in ppc results