Mozilla Online Advertising – an Experiment
Ken Kovash 
Perhaps one of the business world’s easiest arenas for running experiments is online advertising (e.g., pay-per-click search advertising). With the click of a button, you can easily vary one of many variables – messaging, keywords, budget, etc. – to instantly understand its effect.
Over the past couple of months, I’ve been collaborating with David on some different ways to optimize our online advertising efforts. The goal includes improving the downloading path/experience of new Firefox users, as well as understanding and optimizing the investment Mozilla is making in this channel.
One upcoming experiment relates back to funnelcake. Some of you may remember that the source of downloaders looked this:
Thanks to the popularity of our download page and some recent search optimization efforts, the Firefox download page occupies the #1 organic search result in most major search engines (when searching for “Firefox”). With that in mind, one natural question that arises is: if we did zero pay-per-click (ppc) advertising, would our organic traffic (i.e., unpaid search) rise by a corresponding amount? In other words, given the following scenario:
- I am prospective Fx user
- I visit a major search engine searching for Firefox
- I have a propensity to click on paid ads
If I am not presented with an ad in the search results (an official Mozilla ad directing me to www.mozilla.com/firefox), will I instead click on the first organic search result (which also directs me to www.mozilla.com/firefox)?
So, from a results perspective, if we turn off our ppc advertising, we’ll be looking to see if the pie chart above morphs into the chart below (note the 38% organic picks up the 10% ppc from above). While the answer will likely be a strong “no,” we wouldn’t be responsible marketers without at least giving this question some thought and understanding how this dynamic impacts our true cost of acquiring a Fx user through online advertising.
We look forward to soon sharing our methodology and findings.
10 Comments to “Mozilla Online Advertising – an Experiment”
Post comment
Recent Posts
- Why People Don’t Upgrade Their Browser – Part III
- Better Crash Trending – A Test Pilot Proposal
- People in France and Australia Are Also Switching Browsers
- People in Germany Are Switching Browsers
- Internet Usage in Haiti
- How Users Open New Empty Tabs
- The Long Tail of Firefox Use
- 40% Firefox Growth in 2009
- 55% of New Users Install Old Versions of Firefox
- Firefox’s Improving Stability
Archives
- January 2010
- December 2009
- November 2009
- October 2009
- September 2009
- August 2009
- July 2009
- June 2009
- May 2009
- April 2009
- March 2009
- February 2009
- January 2009
- December 2008
- November 2008
- October 2008
- September 2008
- August 2008
- July 2008
- June 2008
- May 2008
- April 2008
- March 2008
- February 2008
- January 2008
- December 2007
- November 2007
- October 2007
- September 2007
What piece of software did you use to make those pie graphs?
ps. the comment box icons are really confusing
I think I should stop reading this blog. It seems to have bought into the whole “advertising is a good thing” idea.
When performing such an experiment, is it wise to announce publicly the findings you are hoping to see before performing the experiment? Does it not leave you open to deliberate attempts to skew the result?
[...] our previous post, we discussed an upcoming experiment related to Mozilla’s online advertising efforts. We saw with [...]
[...] our previous post, we discussed an upcoming experiment related to Mozilla’s online advertising efforts. We saw with [...]
[...] Ken and I set out to answer a question about our search program: how does organic search (meaning results in a search engine [...]
[...] and Paid Search – How Opposites Interact Recently, Ken and I set out to answer a question about our search program: how does organic search (meaning results in a search engine [...]
Andy – I would assume that announcing it on his personal blog that is not linked from many places (I found it from the Freakonomics blog on the NYT) will not have a noticeable impact on the thousands/millions of individual decisions made over the course of this experiment. For those that will find this most will already be using Firefox or be set with their browser of choice. Shouldn’t be a big problem
[...] previously looked at an experiment with our online marketing programs here, here, and here. The results revolved around the interaction of regular (organic) search with paid [...]
[...] previously looked at an experiment with our online marketing programs here, here, and here. The results revolved around the interaction of regular (organic) search with paid [...]