Which verticals have the highest number of PPC advertisers?

Do you know how many advertisers bid on your keywords?

It’s a crucial benchmark for your performance since it impacts just about every KPI (rank, clicks, spend, share, etc.). The chart below comes from our PPC Benchmark Guide for Search Marketers and shows the number of advertisers on different verticals of keywords during Q2 of 2015.

Source: Lighthouse — Google & Bing (Q2 2015)

What You Should Take Away From This Chart

• Retail: It’s not surprising that Clothing and Accessories were the two most competitive retail sub-vertical we looked at. Surprisingly, though, Kitchen & Dining followed close behind.
• Finance: No surprises here. Insurance has the most competition due to the high potential reward for a click and the broad range of types of insurance to advertise.
• Travel: Among the 6 sub-verticals we looked at, Accommodations, Attractions, and Transportation saw a similar number of advertisers, while the other three (Air Travel, Cruises, and Luxury Travel) saw much smaller numbers. This suggests that advertisers in the highly competitive sub-verticals must do more (and possibly spend more) to compete for visibility and clicks.
• Auto: Sure, keywords related to motor vehicles have the most PPC competition. But were you surprised by how many parts companies are advertising on PPC?
• Telecom: The Internet sub-vertical is by far the most competitive of the Telecom verticals. It’s clearly a broad keyword group that we use, so please contact us if you’d like to see the number of PPC advertisers for a more narrow Internet niche.