Despite lower Cost Per Click (CPC) prices, global paid search spend is up 13% on last year. The increase, according to a newly released infographic, is due to a rise in impressions (up 8%) and Clickthrough Rates (CTRs), up 10%.
Digital marketing management platform Kenshoo compared Q3 search spend for over 3,000 advertiser and agency accounts on Google, Bing, Baidu, Yandex, Yahoo! and Yahoo! Japan. Results were based on over 750 billion impressions, 13 billion clicks and USD $6 billion in advertiser spend in 60 countries.
One obvious contributor to the rise in paid search clickthrough rates was Google’s removal of right-hand-side ads in Q1. Another: Google’s introduction of Expanded Text Ads, universally reported to have higher CTRs and now also offered by Bing. But ETAs were only released in mid-June and, in Q3, accounted for just 6% of Google ad impressions (and 13% of clicks).
Why should you care?
For search advertisers, there’s a lot to like in these numbers: we’re getting more (impressions, clicks) at a lower cost per click. For those with limited budgets, improving Impression Share becomes a challenge, however.
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Jeremy is a Partner and Senior Consultant at SureFire. Jeremy has been working in search since 1996, when he joined the Australian search engine, LookSmart. After relocating to San Francisco, he was instrumental in the development of the company’s paid search ad platform. At analytics company Coremetrics (now owned by IBM) he established an in-house search agency managing campaigns for Coremetrics clients such as Macy’s, Bass Pro and Lands End. At Acxiom he managed members of the pioneering SEO firm Marketleap and worked with clients such as Capital One, American General Finance and Kaiser Health. Joining SureFire in 2009, he is the head of Paid Search Advertising and oversees the delivery of AdWords and other PPC campaigns. He also helps clients make sense of their website data.
