Clicks That Cost: How Google Made Over $32 Billion Last Year
In the past four quarters, Google made a whopping $32.2 billion in advertising revenues. To give you just an idea of how much money that is, it's roughly equivalent to the GDP (gross domestic product) of The Bahamas, The Gambia, Haiti, Liberia, Nicaragua, Rwanda, and Suriname —combined.
Today, WordStream, a provider of search marketing software, published a nice infographic showing the twenty most expensive keyword categories in AdWords.
At the top of the list is insurance, with a top CPC (cost per click) of almost $55.
Think about it: someone goes to Google, types in an insurance-related search term (the actual search phrases are not provided, but let's assume it is something like "cheap auto insurance"), then clicks on one of the AdWords ads that Google shows next to the search results —the advertisers now owe Google $55 for a visitor to their site, whether that visitor ends up buying insurance or not...
There are other expensive keyword categories related to finance, including loans ($44 CPC), mortgage ($47 CPC), and credit ($36 CPC).
However, not all categories are have to do with finance; there are quite a few related to the legal profession (attorney, lawyer, claim), technology (hosting, conference call, software), and health (rehab, treatment, cord blood).
According to WordStream, what these keyword categories have in common is that they belong to industries with high lifetime customer value (roughly, the total amount of money you can make off of someone during the time that person remains a customer). So while that $55 click I mentioned earlier may not immediately be profitable, the advertiser bets on making hundreds or thousands of dollars in the long run, on those visitors that do convert to customers.
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