Paid search is the practice of buying ad placements on search engine results pages (SERPs) to capture intent-driven traffic. You bid on keywords, your ad is shown to people actively looking for something, and you pay when they click (PPC — pay-per-click). When it works, it feels like cheating at demand capture; when it doesn’t, it burns budget fast.
Unlike Organic Search, you can scale reach immediately and target by query, location, device, and time. The trade-off is cost discipline: you must watch bids, query matching, and landing page relevance to keep unit economics healthy.
Where paid search fits in analytics
Paid search is a classic lower-funnel channel: you measure it by intent quality and downstream outcomes. Core metrics:
- Click-Through Rate (CTR): ad attractiveness and keyword–ad relevance.
- Conversion Rate: landing page + offer alignment with the query.
- Cost Per Acquisition (CPA): unit cost of getting a conversion.
- Assisted value via your Attribution Model: how much credit paid search gets across the journey.
Short formulas you’ll actually use:
CTR = Clicks / Impressions × 100%CPA = Cost / Conversions
Mini example: If a campaign spends $1,200, gets 3,000 clicks from 60,000 impressions, and drives 60 sign-ups → CTR = 3,000/60,000 = 5%; Conversion Rate = 60/3,000 = 2%; CPA = $1,200/60 = $20.
Practical analytics checklist
- Tie every campaign/ad group to clean UTM Parameters (e.g.,
utm_medium=cpc,utm_source=google,utm_campaign=brand_core,utm_term=brand+keyword). - Split branded vs. non-brand. Branded inflates CTR/CR and can mask poor non-brand economics.
- Monitor search terms to prune waste and expand high-intent variants.
- Align queries → ad copy → landing page; relevance boosts quality and lowers cost.
- Report by intent bucket (brand, competitor, category, long-tail) and by funnel stage.
Typical paid search metrics to watch
| Metric | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| CTR | Query–ad fit and ad appeal |
| Conversion Rate | Landing page + offer fit |
| CPA | Cost efficiency per conversion |
| Revenue / AOV | Downstream value quality |
TL;DR: Paid search is a precision tool for harvesting demand. Instrument it with rigorous tagging, segment by intent, and judge it by CTR → Conversion Rate → CPA, with attribution to keep the bigger journey honest.