San Francisco — New numbers from Efficient Frontier, the worldwide leader in Search Engine Marketing (SEM) technology and services, showed that search powerhouse Google held onto its search advertising market lead during the fourth quarter with 76 percent market share while Yahoo gained 3 percent share year-over-year, according to the report.
The search marketing firms report, the largest independent research in the industry, is based on analysis of 92 billion impressions and 600 million clicks across a portion of its customers, which includes some of the world’s largest brands.
“Despite the economic depression and reports of the erosion of other marketing channels in 2008, the index of Efficient Frontier customers included in the Q4 report saw a minimal 8 percent decrease year-over-year, while the retail sector saw a 9 percent uptick in spending year-over-year, an indication of the strength of the search marketing channel,” the report said.
Google’s market share was supported by considerable gains from Google Content, which experienced 63 percent growth in 2008, reflecting the companies continued focus on improving its targeting and monetization across the Ad Sense network.
Yahoo, who increased its market share by 1.9 percent in Q3, added another 0.5 percent in Q4 to finish the year with a 3 percent annual gain and total 20 percent market share. Microsoft Live Search now represents 4.2 percent of total search advertising spend for advertisers in the Efficient Frontier index.
Even though reports out of Nielsen last week that Google’s search share by total searches had dropped in the month of December, new numbers from Efficient Frontier show the search company still going strong using advertising spending as a metric. According to EF, Google now soaks up 76 percent share of the search engine ad spending, which is right on par with what it held for the third quarter.
According to industry research firm, eMarketer, “search ad spending may not be recession-proof, but it is proving to be recession-resistant.” eMarketer estimates that although the rate of growth is projected to fall over the next three years, search ad spending growth will continue to be positive, in double digits every year until 2012 when it will rise again to nearly 14 percent.
“Search engine marketing remains the most accountable sales and client acquisition channel on or offline,” said James Beriker, President and CEO of Efficient Frontier.
“In fact, our spending under management grew in line with the industry, reflecting a 25 percent increase from 2007 to 2008 despite the slowing economy. To continue to achieve stellar results, the current recession has made it even more critical for search marketers to know their metrics and manage campaigns based on actionable market, sales funnel and conversion data.”