Internet marketing firm Wordstream crunched some numbers and came up with a list of the most expensive keywords you can buy through Google’s AdWords program, the bidding-based system that lets advertisers piggyback on what people are searching for on Google. The price per impression and price per click are determined by search volume and the number of advertisers competing for the word. The top 19 are all pretty predictable: “insurance,” “mortgage,” “donate,” with a few surprises–“conference call” is no. 11, for example. But the Betabeat team did a collective double take over no. 20, a phrase we had never seen before: “cord blood.”
A quick search and a phone call revealed there is apparently a huge market for preserving the umbilical cord and placenta when a couple has a child so that child might have access to their own stem cells later in life in the event of a medical problem. A search for “cord blood” surfaced ads for cord blood banks including Alpha Cord, “The Cord Blood Preservation Experts” with the “Most Successful Transplants” and Corcell, “Saving baby’s cord blood.”
The term “cord blood” (“cordblood bank,” “store umbilical cord blood” are common phrases according to Wordstream) costs an advertiser $20.87 for every user who clicks on it; it costs $3,575 to store cord blood at a New York-based cord blood bank for 20 years.
We tried the 1-800 number for one company, which answered with a recording: “Thank you for calling Family Cord. If you are a medical provider, please press 1. To speak with a cord blood educator, please press 2.”
