Prod­uct List­ing Ads are a grow­ing trends, and for many brands, essen­tial to get them in the mix when con­sumers are in the con­sid­er­a­tion stage of the pur­chase fun­nel. With top retail brands increas­ing the lev­el of invest­ment in PLA’s, it rep­re­sents an impor­tant part of any eCom­merce mar­keter’s adver­tis­ing bud­get.

Prod­uct List­ing Ads (PLAs) have been increas­ing­ly influ­en­tial in paid search adver­tis­ing. Marin Soft­ware research revealed that adver­tis­ers increased spend on PLAs by near­ly 300 per­cent in 2013, and one out of every five paid shop­ping clicks in 2013 was on a PLA.

Those are pow­er­ful sta­tis­tics and it’s no sur­prise that PLAs are begin­ning to make an impact on adver­tis­ing bud­gets. A study by AdGooroo shows that on aver­age, the top 20 adver­tis­ers spent a whop­ping 63 per­cent of their desk­top paid search bud­get on PLAs, with only 37 per­cent devot­ed to tra­di­tion­al text ads.

Even more inter­est­ing is the vari­a­tion by which indi­vid­ual retail­ers bud­get for PLAs. Rakuten.com spent an incred­i­ble 99.9 per­cent of their adver­tis­ing bud­get on PLAs, while on the oth­er end of the scale Ama­zon spent 100 per­cent of their desk­top paid search bud­get on tra­di­tion­al text ads and 0 per­cent on PLAs. (Notably, Ama­zon report­ed­ly does not spon­sor PLAs as a pol­i­cy.)

Oth­er top retail brands spend­ing a major­i­ty of their adver­tis­ing bud­get on PLAs includ­ed Wal­mart (71 per­cent), Best Buy (79 per­cent), Sta­ples (85 per­cent), Uline (77 per­cent), GlobalIndustrial.com (90 per­cent) and The Vit­a­min Shoppe (98 per­cent).

A notable men­tion must also be made for eBay who, hav­ing deter­mined in a 2013 study that paid search is inef­fec­tive, have now revised their paid search strat­e­gy by spend­ing 93 per­cent of their bud­get on PLAs and only 7 per­cent on text ads.

Advertisers Spending Big on PLAs Are Reaping The Rewards

AdGooroo’s study also showed that the top 20 adver­tis­ers spent more on PLAs ($283 mil­lion) than tra­di­tion­al text ads ($176 mil­lion) dur­ing Q2 2014, with the aver­age cost-per-click of $1.63 for PLAs and $1.07 for text ads.

Over­all, although PLAs account­ed for just 37 per­cent of the 8 bil­lion total impres­sions gar­nered dur­ing the Q2 2014, 50 per­cent of all clicks were on PLAs, which had an aver­age click-through rate (CTR) of 5.96 per­cent, com­pared to a 4.91 per­cent CTR for text ads.

You can read the full AdGooroo report on paid search PLA spends on their web­site.

This arti­cle first appeared on the Linkdex blog.

Let us know your thoughts on the impor­tance of PLAs to your busi­ness.