StudiesReaching LIfe Science Researchers As a professional network for life science researchers, The Science Advisory Board is keenly interested in understanding the online behavior of scientists. Reaching scientists online can be accomplished in a number of ways, including web advertising, direct marketing through email, through sponsored advertisements at conference websites, in electronic journals, in search engines, or at topic specific websites. While there are hundreds of ways to reach life scientists online, we were particularly interested in learning about the effectiveness of sponsored link advertisements in search engines. In order to gauge the effectiveness of these links, we reached out to roughly 250 US-based life science researchers and asked for their opinion on sponsored keyword search links presented to them when searching for scientific information at GoogleTM. The results of this study are presented below:  About 87% of polled respondents are using GoogleTM to find information about life science products at least three times a week. These findings demonstrate that your colleagues are using “generic” search engines like GoogleTM to find information about life science products and services, as opposed to relying solely on industry or topic specific databases. This indicates that an appropriate audience can be reached through the use of sponsored link advertising.  When searching for information about life science products, your colleagues most frequently utilized the “natural” search links from GoogleTM. However, 31% of respondents indicated that they are using “sponsored” links to navigate and find information. Twice as many respondents indicated using the sponsored links placed above the traditional links than those who used the links placed vertically down the side of the natural results.  Of those who indicated that they utilized sponsored links in their search activity, many of the individuals believed that the information presented from these links was generally “accurate”. Sixty percent of respondents indicated greater than 7 on a 10 point scale of accuracy.  We also asked respondents about how useful they believed the sponsored links to be when searching for life science related material. Not surprisingly the answers mimicked the results about accuracy above, suggesting that the accuracy of the search link results correlates with the utility that researchers perceived from these links. Taken together we believe these results suggest that a targeted keyword sponsoring campaign, using specific search terms would be successful for reaching life scientists. Researchers are not likely to click on the sponsored link unless the message is highly relevant to their search term of choice. Further, the links above the natural search results are likely to yield better results than the vertical links presented next to the natural search links. Curious about what your colleagues think of these results? Check out their comments here. For questions and comments, please contact g.thompson@scienceboard.net [ View Current & Future Studies ] [ View Past Studies ] |
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