What if performance advertising is just an analytics scam?
> Technically, when someone does a Google search for “Williams Sonoma Cast Iron Skillet,” they probably would have clicked on one of the first 10 organic results, EVERY ONE OF WHICH leads to their website. But, y’know what ol’ Billy Ma’s performance marketers couldn’t then do: prove their value to their bosses.> [picture of that search term and williams sonoma ads with shopping links]The main problem here is that if Williams Sonoma was not advertising on that search term, Lodge and Food52 etc etc would, and then those companies would be above the Williams Sonoma organic placements.The spend is necessary in a defensive way because Google creates a bidding war even for the hyper relevant.edit: I just checked and if you search "williams sonoma skillet", if WS was not paying for [green] then the very first "result" (ad) would be Food52 [red] https://imgur.com/a/9Nnxs6hI just tried "airbnb paris" and the first result is, somewhat predictably, an ad that is not airbnb. But the second one is also an ad, this time from airbnb. So they clearly didn't keep their spend dialed down to zero, and are aware of the need to advertise on their own keyword.