People click on paid-search ads for many reasons, but are usually looking for answers. About 33% of people click on paid-search ads because they directly respond to their search query. 

The primary reason that people click on a YouTube or Amazon search ad is because these ads mention a brand they are familiar with, according to Clutch survey  data released Wednesday.

Clutch surveyed 506 people who clicked on a paid-search ad in the past month to learn about the reasons they click on paid-search ads as well as the type of ads they click on and the search engine they are using when they click on ads.

People also said that engines like Bing and Google are doing a better job of calling out ads. About 77% of survey participants said they now can “confidently” distinguish paid-search ads from organic search results.

“Since people often understand the difference between paid and organic search results, consistent brand messaging across paid ads and organic results signals that your company is a trusted source of information about a topic,” according to the Clutch survey findings.

Messages need to remain clean and simple in all types of ads, so people can recognize the brand. It may sound simple, but it took MasterCard more than 50 years to remove its name from the circle’s logo. Internal research suggests that 80% of people recognize the brand logo without the name.

Similar to MasterCard’s strategy, consistent and relevant brand messaging across different search engines creates brand recognition for the target audience. 

Keywords, until recently, have been the key to searches. Now we see audiences becoming the trigger more often. Still, people search for keywords that reflect their interests or solutions to challenges. That might mean a missing step in a recipe, for example, or directions on how to build a table.

So getting people to click on a paid-search ad that directly answers a search query has become easier than getting them to click for other reasons. In fact, 33% of people click on a search ad because it directly answers their question in a query.

About 38% of Baby boomers are most likely to click on branded paid-search ads and the least likely to take into account whether a search ad ranks above other search results, at 13%.