Search Clicks Worth Twice as Much as Contextual Clicks

Efficient Frontier is reporting its clients' average cost per click on paid search and contextual advertising across a range of categories. The category splits are interesting (note that EF's auto clients pay more for contextual clicks than for search clicks), but more interesting to me is the fact there's still a huge difference between search and contextual prices. So while we've heard reports that contextual ads are performing better now than they have in the past, keep in mind that search clicks -- to Efficient Frontier's clients, at least -- are on average still worth twice as much as clicks from contextual ads.