Paid Search Is on the Rebound in the Q3 2011
“NFL football players and team owners are back to playing, children are back at school, and paid search marketers are back to buying keywords,” writes Craig Macdonald, chief marketing officer and vice president of products for Covario. The company projects that paid search will rebound in the third quarter.
According to Covario, paid search is growing at 28 percent year-over-year in the third quarter, and 22 percent over the second quarter of 2011.
Uncertain economic conditions in the second quarter made it a weak one, which makes the third quarter less than a surprise, according to Macdonald.
In North America, Google claims 78 percent of spend, followed by Yahoo-Bing with 16 percent and Facebook with 6 percent.
Spend on Google is up 24 percent year-over-year, while spend on Yahoo-Bing is down 20 percent year-over-year, but up 24 percent quarter-over-quarter. Facebook spend is up 130 percent year-over-year.
In Europe, the Middle East and Africa, spend on Google is up 40 percent year-over-year and 17 percent quarter-over-quarter. Google commands 95 percent of spend in the region.
In Asia Pacific, spend on China-based Baidu grew 52 percent year-over-year and 16 percent quarter-over-quarter. Spend on Google grew 35 percent year-over-year and 57 percent quarter-over-quarter.
Projected impression growth is slower than spend growth, according to Covario.
“Impressions are up 16% from the second quarter, and up 22% from last year,” writes Macdonald. “Impression growth is highest on Google and Baidu (25% and 35%, respectively over the third quarter of 2010).”
Cost per click (CPC) is up 5 percent globally quarter-over-quarter, with Google’s CPCs up 7 percent. This growth is due to the ongoing increases in bidding on generic keywords.
According to separate numbers from Efficient Frontier, Finance CPCs were $2.04, up 6.3 percent month-over-month and 16.6 percent year-over-year.
Automotive CPCs were $0.60, unchanged from the previous month but up 17.6 percent year-over-year.
Retail CPCs were $0.51, up 6.3 percent month-over-month and 21.4 percent year-over-year.
“While other preliminary data also indicate a robust Q3 for Search marketers, we will have to wait until the end of thSeptember to see how this quarter rounds out,” writes Dr. Siddharth Shah, senior director of business analytics at Efficient Frontier.
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