Do you have ad blindness towards the sponsored results found at the search engines? You know the results off to the right side or boxed in at the very top of the results. Some people do. They simply will not click on a paid search listing. At Cre8asite Forums there is a thread named When do you click? where you see two outstanding individuals (also happen to be forum admins at Cre8asite) go at it about why you should or should not click on these PPC ads.
Ammon Johns, aka Black_Knight, suggests that when searching for general information he is more likely to look towards the organic, free search results. But when Ammon is in buy mode and looking for product information, he often looks towards the paid, PPC, sponsored listings.
Bill Slawski, aka bragadocchio, says that he "never look[s] at sponsored/featured listings on the search engines." Bill explains because he expects "most sponsored ads are based upon a broad match, and I have no expectation that many of them will be a good match for most of the queries I fashion, and often refashion as I am searching."
Ammon then responds stating that "broad match is generally considered the trademark of the amatuer, for exactly the reasons you stated." Ammon goes on to explain that "Conversion is the single most important thing in most PPC campaigns, and the first step to that is ensuring that a listing won't mislead anyone into a click that didn't serve them." And the final quote I would like to leave with is "It is only PPC that adds a penalty to getting untargeted listings or unqualified visitors."
