Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: Here we map the conversion journey (i.e., the path a costumer takes to purchase a product or service) for phones, laptops, and vehicles (i.e., cars and trucks) by analyzing the online searches on Bing by people in the U.S. during 2021. We show that, contrary to the conceptual model, the observed path of customers is often circuitous and haphazard. But, nevertheless, major advertisers heavily concentrate their advertising late in the customer's journey, on people who are not just already likely to buy in the product category, but likely to be committed to a specific brand. We introduce ``associated keywords'' (i.e., keywords that are related to conversion journey, but not the actual products, brands, or product categories) as cost effective keywords for targeting people who are committed to buying in the product category, but not yet committed to a specific brand. We show that ``associated keywords'' can be even more precise if approximately 5 days of search history of each user are taken into consideration. These findings show how advertising can be optimized and tailored to customers throughout the conversion journey. Our results provide a critical baseline and precursor to increased context becoming available in the large language model-based search world.
Source: Frontiers in Communication
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $1,418
OpenAlex ID: W4409706289