Monetizing Search Marketing: Online Retail Keyword Characteristics and Decisions

To make judicious resource allocation decisions in search marketing, it is essential to understand the motives behind online shoppers’ searching and purchasing behavior. Taking the approach of understanding consumers’ desires to reduce cognitive load in online shopping, we construct a goal-related keyword characterization framework. Most search keywords reflect a combination of the following characteristics retailer specific, brand specific, product specific, feature related, and shopping intention. We analyze search ad visibility (including result rankings and dual-appearances), clickthrough, and revenue data associated with visitor-disclosed search keywords from a leading Web-only retailer over one year. We also investigate whether the relationships vary for head and tail keywords. Our findings show a variety of interesting impacts of keyword characteristics and dual-appearances of ads on search marketing performance. In addition, the impacts of search ad visibility on clickthrough are enhanced when searchers use head keywords. The contributions of the research include a comprehensive search keyword characterization framework, and the analysis of the relationships among keyword characteristics, search ad visibility, and search performance that have strong implications for search marketing monetization decisions.