A majority of businesses that have used pay-per-click advertising over the past two years to drive traffic to their company website have noticed a deterioration in return on investment (ROI), according to research published today. The survey, commissioned by Dutch firm Toading and conducted by Pulstracker, found that 71% of surveyed companies in Europe claimed some deterioration, with 21% of the total complaining of a major drop in performance.

The principle cause for this decline, according to the surveyed companies, was likely to be increased competition within their own industry sector, as more pay-per-click advertisers in their space had pushed up the bidding for keywords (63%). Nearly a quarter of the companies complained that they were unable or could not afford to bring in outside expertise to fine-tune their performance (24%). Only 3% believed that the change was down to fluctuating market conditions in their sector, resulting in less demand for their product or service.

The complexity of setting up account options was mentioned (22%), but a majority of unhappy respondents (52%) said the biggest practical hurdle for them was the complicated' keyword bidding process. 26% said that balancing the need for outside expertise and consultancy with the corresponding cost and impact on ROI was causing problems for them.

"Businesses' continued use of pay-per click advertising shows that they have benefited and still find it a valuable tool, but they find it an unpredictable and complex undertaking, as this study has found," commented Mathijs van Abbe, CEO of Toading. "Keyword bidding in particular crops up as a frustration for advertisers. This is a sign that, as markets become more crowded, advertisers need to be more precise about their offerings, including pricing information. Not only is this helpful for potential customers, but it can dramatically improve conversion rates, and doesn't have to be the complicated process many fear it to be."

This report was commissioned by Toading and conducted by market researchers Pulstracker. It details quantitative research with companies across Europe and covers a range of industry sectors, including e-retail, business services, manufacturing/engineering and financial services. In each case, the owner, CEO or marketing manager was interviewed. More than 100 companies were contacted for the research project, with the sample split evenly according to respondent type.
Searchengine technology firm Toading has recently welcomed three important new clients. Elmar Travel, Reed Elsevier and Holland’s leading office supply company Overtoom.

The online product offer of Overtoom is enormous and makes it impossible to update pricing and product changes in the different product ads manually. With the Toading technology individual ads for more then 50,000 products are generated and continuously updated. 'We hope to take Overtoom’s search engine advertising actvities to the next level,' adds Mathijs van Abbe.

For VakantieDiscounter.nl, owned by Elmar Travel, all the latest travel offers are being “Toaded” at accommodation, location, region and country level. 'At this moment we are testing which ad template shows the best performance,” says Iwan Luiten, managing partner Toading. We are also investigating the possibilities of using the travel reviews from Zoover.nl in the ads. We are convinced that this kind of information can offer important additional value to the consumer.'

Reed Business, owner of a number of high-traffic business sites, has planned to launch a new vacancy service. Toading has been contracted to generate and publish for all job postings within the different search engines.

At the moment Toading is looking for a new office as the current growth rate requires more space. Toading is also working on a first financing round and hopes to start with international expansion in Q4 of 2007.

Toading is pleased to announce that VillaXL, 2Waytraffic and Shops.nl have decided to with the implementation of Toading in order to increase conversion rates of their PPC campaigns.
VillaXL is a modern rental organization offering stunning holiday homes and villa's in Belgium (the Ardennes), France, Austria, Spain, Italy, Ireland and elsewhere. 2waytraffic is a global leader in interactive entertainment. The company converts viewers into revenue generating customers by creating and exploiting interactive entertainment content across television, mobile and digital platforms. Shops.nl is an online retailer which offers a great variety of different products. Due to the continuous changes in the online offers the Toading technology is very interesting as it continuously synchronizes the clients' databases with their online ad campaigns.

The Travel Distribution Summit Europe is the world's biggest event for travel marketing, pricing and technology professionals. Toading will exhibit at this summit and can be found at stand number 23. The summit will be held in London the 23 rd and 24 th of May 2007.

Please visit the Travel Distribution Summit Europe in order to obtain more information
about this event.