Adwords includes click count

Google has included yet another innovative feature in its Adwords offering – a click count feature that shows the number of clicks the advertiser has garnered. The experiment was officially confirmed by a Google spokesperson.

What is still unclear though, is the method of calculation of these clicks. Is the count shown a sum of clicks for the entire campaign, ad, or over the advertiser’s account history?

The impact of this experiment could be far reaching – higher click counts could end up boosting click-through rates (CTR), since viewers would definitely be inclined to click on ‘established’ ads. In this case, the advantages of long term advertising come back to the fore. Advertisers and agencies will have to rethink their strategies. Further, this measure could end up increasing the importance of click-through rates (CTR) over cost-per acquisition (CPA).

Pam of Search Engine Land rightly said "it's not clear whether advertisers are aware that they’ve agreed to allow public display of what most likely consider proprietary information." Advertisers would definitely not want competitors to know important statistics such as this one.

At Pipon Solutions, we try to keep a track of changes in the search landscape. What do you make of this particular feature? Should Google make it a standard feature?