The thing is, at least in my case, this simply isn't true. Nobody buys a VPS on the first click; if someone clicks through a google ad for my company, yeah, google should get some credit, but most of the credit should go to the blog the customer saw a month ago.
That's the thing; because the adwords are the first hits and are super convenient for the customer, they pick up a lot of people that would have clicked on the organic result.
This is called attribution measurement. It is generally considered the next big thing in advertising technology - primarily by anyone who runs a website where buying intent isn't obvious.
I think this is also why facebook is so highly valued; people believe that facebook has enough tracking data to see that blog that my customer read last week that actually caused the customer to sign up through the adword this week.
Facebook isn't valued because of this, it is valued because of the sheer volume of people. Facebook lets you advertise to people who "like" something, but doesn't do anything very smart to predict this (perhaps they might in the future).
Google, OTOH, does have data on what you search for and actively uses it on 3rd party sites, as well as offering re-targeting.
This is called attribution measurement. It is generally considered the next big thing in advertising technology - primarily by anyone who runs a website where buying intent isn't obvious.
I think this is also why facebook is so highly valued; people believe that facebook has enough tracking data to see that blog that my customer read last week that actually caused the customer to sign up through the adword this week.
Facebook isn't valued because of this, it is valued because of the sheer volume of people. Facebook lets you advertise to people who "like" something, but doesn't do anything very smart to predict this (perhaps they might in the future).
Google, OTOH, does have data on what you search for and actively uses it on 3rd party sites, as well as offering re-targeting.