I wonder how effective it is actually.
The narrative we are lead to believe is that the user will be thankful to get the information it needs surfaced right in front of them. Or the difference between the paid ad and the organic results will be blurry enough to not have an impact.
Yet I think it works only if:
- the ad effectively matches what the user is looking for (that's not a given, even amazon throws a lot of random things supposed to be in relation to search results), and if the product pushed by the ad is seen as legit.
- the ad is from a brand the user somewhat trust in the first place. For instance most people won't choose an ad from an unknown phone maker if they were searching for an iPhone (or they're getting scammed, and that's another issue). I see very few things average people would just search on Google and buy from a random supplier, especially for mortgage or anything high value.
What I am getting at is, there's a significant amount of effort needed on the vendor part to make an ad work, and I wouldn't be surprised if the brands going these length are not already appearing pretty high in the search results in the first place. Having the top stop could still make a difference, but that's just a nudge, and not something critical or that valuable compared to the rest.
