Back Seat Marketers

FYI, Google is not in the internet business, it is primarily in the advertising and media delivery business.

Google’s PPC traffic report from comScore today reflects the nature of the emerging recession that is gripping most of Corporate America. While technology VCs would like to think that PPC will be the last element of marketing to be touched, because it is ROI oriented, they may be missing an important temporary facet on this point in the short term.

First, companies cut variable costs quickly when facing a down turn. As a result, PPC advertising may actually be one of the only current costs being used, and as a more variable, more responsive cost in the system may get cut because it can get turned on and off so easily. Interestingly, if people slow down buying, and then ROI gets worse making the PPC returns less compelling, we may be seeing a real-time consumer slow down occur via Google’s click traffic.

Second, most major corporate marketing departments aren’t using PPC as the major element of lead generation or sales. As such, the decision to cut “everything else” in the face of having to get rid of programs means that PPC is still fairly high on the list of things to remove when budgets get cut v. the big media splash campaign that supports a new product in store.

One last thought…
Wouldn’t it be interesting to see Google’s new account spend v. existing account comparables?