Recession has hit several sectors including the top PPC spenders like Finance, insurance and travel.

We have been running a PPC campaign in the banking and financial space since over a year now, and this is the first time that we’re seeing a substantial fall in cost per click even when the avg. positions have moved up.

Cost Per Click versus Avg Position - Google Adwords

The average cost per click in the first week of December has been $1.77 for an avg. position of 7.2. Compare this with February 2008, when a cost per click of $1.82 got us a position of 8.6.

There are several other SEM campaigns where we have seen a similar trend allowing us to safely conclude that some semblance of sanity is now returning to the way people have been bidding on their adwords campaigns.