Performance Comparison Between Sponsored Links and Natural Links

Many websites use online marketing campaigns in order to develop visibility and boost traffic. The question is: How effective are these online campaigns? Additionally, are sponsored links or natural links more effective? A Xiti Monitor study has analyzed the impact of online marketing campaigns on website traffic.

On average, 80% of a website’s traffic is generated naturally (direct access, search engines, reference links, or e-mail links). The remaining 20% come from marketing campaigns (sponsored links, e-mail campaigns, advertising, and affiliation).

If we look more in detail, search engines (using natural links) generate a third of a website’s traffic, while sponsored links only account for 12.2% of their traffic.

Natural links created better results than sponsored links in terms of:

•    Rebound rate: a visitor who enters a site via a natural link is more likely to visit at least 2 pages (59% compared to 56% for sponsored links).

•    Page views per visit: the visits generated by natural links generate 8.3 page views vs. the 7.4 page views for visits generated by sponsored links.

In addition to generating more traffic, accessing a website via “natural” channels is also more effective when we consider qualitative aspects such as rebound rate and page views per visit. This matches up with the fact that the “natural link visitors” are different types of visitors than the “sponsored link visitors.” A “natural link visitor” can be viewed as a more “loyal” visitor, while a “sponsored link visitor” merely finds him/herself directed to a website that more or less responds to his/her needs.

Nonetheless, we must put these results in perspective because the success of a campaign is not measured by qualitative aspects but rather by its capacity to reach objectives (number of people registered for the newsletter, approved reservations, purchase confirmations, etc.) Currently, a Xiti Monitor study is analyzing the performance of sponsored links in terms of conversion (online purchases).

Source:
Xiti Monitor
Adapted by: Jessica Hartstein

Tags: Sponsored links, traffic, Web Analytics, xiti monitor

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This entry was posted by Pierre Wiltz on Thursday, January 22nd, 2009 at 12:20 pm and is filed under Web Analytics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.