Paid Search up 17% in Q2 2012, Keyword Pricing up for the First Time Since Q3 2011

Jason Hahn | DM Confidential | July 18, 2012

According to Covario, paid search spending rose 17 percent in the second quarter compared to the same period last year. Meanwhile, keyword pricing increased for the first time since the third quarter of 2011.

Covario’s quarterly global paid search spend analysis showed that spending on paid search advertising was up 17 percent year-over-year in the second quarter, and up 5 percent from the first quarter. The company called the second-quarter growth healthy, but noted that it was down from the spending that was observed during the previous three quarters.

“We expect things will further heat up in the second half of 2012, especially since early signs indicate creeping CPC inflation for paid search globally, which must be factored into advertiser budget plans,” the report noted.

In the Americas, spending was up 15 percent year-over-year and up 1 percent quarter-over-quarter. Covario maintains its forecast that annualized increases in spend for 2012 will fall in the 18-20 percent range.

In Europe and the Middle East, spend was up 2 percent year-over-year and up 1 percent quarter-over-quarter. Meanwhile, in Asia-Pacific spend was up 41 percent year-over-year and up 23 percent quarter-over-quarter, thanks to continued investment in China, Japan, India and the Australia-New Zealand regions.

Paid search impressions were up 7 percent year-over-year and 10 percent quarter-over-quarter, while clicks were up 18 percent year-over-year and down 1 percent quarter-over-quarter, and cost was up 17 percent year-over-year and up 6 percent quarter-over-quarter.

Google continued to dominate the global landscape, claiming 86 percent of spend, 91 percent of impressions and 68 percent of clicks.

Covario notes that spending on Google was up 16 percent from a year ago and up 5 percent from the previous quarter.

Yahoo-Bing, which continues to benefit from the implementation of “broad match,” saw its share of spend grow around 30 percent year-over-year and 3 percent quarter-over-quarter. The alliance maintains 7 percent of spend, 3 percent of impressions and 5 percent of clicks.

In the Americas, Google has about 90 percent of the search engine market, while Yahoo-Bing has about 9 percent.

Cost per click (CPC) for the five major global search engines (Baidu, Bing, Google, Yahoo and Yandex) was $0.80, up 6 percent quarter-over-quarter, the first increase since the third quarter of 2011. Baidu’s CPC was $0.19, while Bing’s was $1.32, Google’s was $1.01, Yahoo’s was $0.80 and Yandex’s was $0.61.

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