If you loved watching Mad Men on TV, you’ll recall how the characters seemed to smoke like chimneys and drink like fish. The golden age of advertising as it became known.

Today, though, marketing has evolved significantly from the days of Mad Men. Instead of boozy lunches and celebratory smokes, now we have lunchtime running clubs, healthy diets, Dry January and yoga clubs.

But while marketing might have swapped cigars and bourbon for flip-flops and callisthenics, there are plenty of addictions floating around. Namely, one giant addiction, paid search, and it’s time we got to grips with it because it’s killing brands.

How much does a click cost?

In their annual report, which examined paid search data from March 2023 to March 2024, Wordstream stated that the cost per click of paid search had increased for 86% of industries.

They also found that cost per lead increased for 19 out of 23 industries, with an average increase of about 25%. This is a little lower than last year’s 27% increase, which came after “record inflation and an unstable economy”.

To save any of your brains while eating your quinoa, this is a whopping 52% increase in cost per lead over 2 years.

And before you run for the director’s bottle of whisky, which you know he keeps locked in his drawer, I’m assuming you’ve realised that we aren’t even looking at the data from last year.

Yes, the CFO will be all over the marketing department, especially when she reads about Google’s advertising revenue being up by 12% year-on-year.

Of course, every sector is different, and there are some winners and losers in this data, but the point remains the same. Your addiction to search costs is going up, probably while you’re being squeezed by inflation.

No wonder marketing spending is in the gutter. But it doesn’t have to be like this.

The Long and the Yawn of It

Les Binet and Peter Field released their classic book The Long and the Short of It over a decade ago at this point.

In this report, they were as clear as day. Make sure you build a brand. But repeating this message is getting tiring, as the point they were trying to make still isn’t hitting home for marketers.

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Source : https://www.marketingweek.com/paid-search-killing-brand-health/