American businesses spend close to US$100 billion each year to secure top advertising spots in search engine results – even though it’s not exactly a secret that most online shoppers scroll right past them.
In fact, organic links – results that aren’t sponsored advertisements – can receive up to 10 times as many clicks as search ads, industry data shows.
I refer to this phenomenon as “search ad avoidance,” and it’s a big problem for the multibillion-dollar industry. But it turns out that not all groups are equally averse to clicking on sponsored search results.
According to my newly published peer-reviewed research, people with conservative political views are more likely to click on sponsored search results.
Republican-leaning brands such as Black Rifle Coffee Company might want to take note.
To explore the relationship between politics and search engine behavior, I conducted several studies.
First, I examined data from more than 500,000 visitors to a nationwide retailer’s website. I analyzed the percentage of visitors from each U.S. state who arrived at the website by........