Advertisers Increased Spend and Click-Through Rates in Q2 2011

The second quarter of 2011 saw advertisers boost spend and click-through rates (CTR), according to a new white paper from Marin Software. During this time period, Google improved its efficiencies and Yahoo/Bing saw increased spending.

Advertisers increased spend on paid search by 20 percent year-over-year, increasing CTR by 12 percent to 1.24 percent. Meanwhile, cost per click (CPC) remained unchanged from the same quarter last year.

“These improvements in click-through rates and clicks, without an accompanying increase in cost-per-click, point to efficiency gains for large scale advertisers over the past year,” the white paper noted. “It’s also worth noting here that we saw a quarterly decline in spend and clicks, but that could be a consequence of seasonality or because many advertisers had a breakout first quarter."

Marin also found that impressions rose 7 percent year-over-year in the second quarter, but declined 30 percent quarter-over-quarter.

Citing comScore numbers, Marin notes that while Google led the U.S. search market with 65.5 percent of all U.S.-based queries conducted in May, the search giant monetized its searches much more effectively than its competitors, accounting for 83 percent of advertisers spend, 82 percent of paid clicks and 78 percent of impressions.

In the second quarter, impressions on Google declined 15 percent on a year-over-year basis and dipped 30 percent from the first quarter. Meanwhile, clicks rose 8 percent year-over-year and declined 17 percent quarter-over-quarter. Spend rose 10 percent year-over-year and dipped 7 percent quarter-over-quarter. CTR rose 27 percent year-over-year and increased 18 percent quarter-over-quarter. Meanwhile, CPC rose 2 percent year-over-year and increased 12 percent quarter-over-quarter.

Impressions on Yahoo/Bing in the second quarter rose 20 percent year-over-year and declined 21 percent quarter-over-quarter, while clicks rose 27 percent year-over-year and decreased 20 percent quarter-over-quarter. Spend surged 52 percent year-over-year and increased 13 percent quarter-over-quarter. CTR rose 6 percent year-over-year and increased 1 percent quarter-over-quarter, while CPC rose 20 percent year-over-year and increased 41 percent quarter-over-quarter.

Google’s CPC in the second quarter was $0.80, while its CTR was 1.34 percent.

Yahoo/Bing’s CPC in the second quarter was $0.81, while its CTR was 1.55 percent.

Marin also observed advertisers improving efficiency by increasing use of “exact match” keywords.

The white paper also highlighted industry-specific trends. Health care boasted the highest median CTR in the second quarter with 2.19 percent, followed by finance with 2.02 percent, auto with 1.83 percent, travel with 1.80 percent, retail with 1.23 percent, B2B with 0.98 percent and education with 0.60 percent.

The industry with the highest median CPC in the second quarter was B2B with $3.20, followed by health care with $1.83, education with $1.80, auto with $1.51, finance with $1.49, travel with $0.65 and retail with $0.46.

Source:

http://www.marinsoftware.com/downloads/marin_Q2_2011_research_brief.pdf