UK search marketing sector rebounds after positive Christmas Season led by retail
Spend expected to grow by more than 15 per cent in 2010
The Search Engine Marketing industry posted solid sequential and year on year growth for the fourth quarter of 2009.
Marketers, especially in the retail category, took advantage of growing consumer demand and took a more aggressive position with their search campaign spend according to Efficient Frontier, a performance marketing company with more than $750 million in global client spend annually. This data and specific industry trends were released today in the company’s Q4 2009 UK Search Engine Performance Report.
“The fourth quarter results and the 2010 outlook paint a much rosier picture than we’ve seen in more than a year,” said David Karnstedt, President and CEO, Efficient Frontier. “While certain sectors such as travel continue to lag, we expect overall growth to exceed 15 percent for the full year 2010.”
In 2009, the search marketing sector slowly climbed out of the malaise established in the final months of 2008 culminating in a fourth quarter 2009 that posted solid sequential and year on year growth. In the UK, sequential Quarter on Quarter (QoQ) growth was up 27% and Year on Year (YoY) growth was up 16%. However, overall Cost per Click (CPC) remains well below year ago levels, indicating that overall market competition remains suppressed.
The key barometer for Q4 is always retail, and in the fourth quarter of 2009, retailers spent aggressively in search. The Efficient Frontier Q409 Search Engine Performance Report provides evidence that search continues to be a key part of consumers’ shopping activity and that all the engines benefitted from the strong growth in Christmas shopping. According to the Efficient Frontier data, impression volume increased across Google and Yahoo! and bounced back to Q408 levels on Bing. Click through rates on all engines increased year on year (YoY).
Google’s particular strength in Retail helped them post strong gains in both spend and clicks in the quarter. Google’s share of clicks rose two percentage points to 86.9%. Yahoo! was the biggest loser in paid click share giving up 1.6 percentage points since Q3 in moving from 11.4% to 9.8%. Bing held relatively stable at 3.3% in Q4 vs. 3.7% in Q3.
While Google’s share of spend rose one percentage point from 86.6% in Q3 to 87.6% in Q4, Yahoo! gave up one percentage point in spend. Yahoo!’s strengthening CPC offset some of the click loss. Bing remained steady at 4.3% share of spend.
