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The holiday shopping crush is underway!

In November 2007, our agency’s clients in aggregate spent 35% more on paid search than in October 2007. (This statistic excludes a small number of new clients for whom we did not have complete data for both months.)

Breaking this result out by engine, our clients spent 36% more November-vs.-October on Google, 35% more on Yahoo, and 17% more on Microsoft.

Increased click volumes drove this rise in ad spend. Our clients saw CPCs up only 5% overall, November vs. October.

Breaking out that 5% by engine: Google CPC’s were up on average 5% vs. prior month; Yahoo, up 8%; Microsoft, up 2%.

In absolute terms, our clients’ aggregate CPCs on Google rose from an average of 59.4c in October to 62.6c in November; Yahoo rose from 47.8c to 54.2c; and Microsoft rose from 53.0c to 54.2c.

Here’s a plot of average CPC by engine, aggregated across our client base, for the Fall season (click to enlarge):

google-pay-per-click-market-share1.jpg

While we suspect CPCs jumped more 5% industry-wide last month, our clients experienced lower than average cost-per-click increases due to our portfolio bidding platform. Nearly all of our clients instruct us to buy paid clicks for them based on efficiency, and our optimization algorithms avoids overbidding on high-cost terms with poor conversion.

Continuing earlier market share reports, we note the proportion of our clients’ aggregate ad spend going to Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft stayed essentially flat from October to November: Google at 79.3%, Yahoo at 16.2%, and Microsoft at 4.5%. These “Big Three” PPC engine share numbers add to 100% as we’ve excluded our agency’s clients’ spend on smaller engines and shopping feeds. (click to enlarge)

google Microsoft Yahoo Cost Per Click values, Fall 2007

Here are those data in tabular form:

Month Google Yahoo Microsoft
2007-01 73% 22% 5%
2007-02 70% 26% 5%
2007-03 72% 24% 4%
2007-04 76% 20% 5%
2007-05 74% 21% 5%
2007-06 73% 21% 6%
2007-07 76% 19% 5%
2007-08 77% 18% 5%
2007-09 76% 19% 5%
2007-10 79% 16% 5%
2007-11 79% 16% 5%

As mentioned in prior months, nearly all of our clients instruct us to run their paid search campaigns to their chosen economic target. None of our clients set a priori budget levels by engine. Our portfolio bidding platform optimizes ad spend, buying the highest quality clicks first. Thus, an increase in ad spend on one engine, relative to the others, reflects an increase in click quality relative to the others.

We’re clearly in the tumultuous home stretch — just a few more critical weeks to make or break retailers’ calendar ‘07 sales goals. Buckle your seatbelts!

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  • George Michie: Chris, I wouldn't be surprised if that's a real number. Inc says they have 550 employees, so their income would have to be $50...
  • George Michie: Hi Christian, I suppose they take the same percentage hit off their commission that the retailer does. To my thinking it's the...
  • Chris Zaharias: I read the magazine on a flight Sunday and recall seeing iCrossing on there at ~~$100M in revenues, and thought the same thing of...
  • Alan Rimm-Kaufman: Christian -- I didn't mean to imply all retailers will face Q4 losses. But it is not improbable that many retailers will be...
  • Christian Little: Despite the economic crisis, how could most retailers be facing a Q4 loss? For most retail this is the best time of the year, you...
  • Christian Little: That's pretty remarkable...makes me want to build a coupon site lol. Don't coupon sites take a huge hit in commissions though...
  • Stephen Schramke: Sage advice. Thanks for sharing!
  • George Michie: Could be Neil. I have my doubts. My suspicion is that there just isn't much work being done, other than taking commission checks to...
  • Neilzb: Those numbers are pretty remarkable, but if I had to guess I would say that it’s possible that they are just 8 people 'outsourcing' full...
  • Jeff Cornejo: I disagree that a revenue/employee ratio shows ANY kind of profitability. If anything, a mostly-passthrough model, with high...
  • George Michie: Hi Dan, The IP address of the advertiser isn't a factor, anyone can run geo-targeted ads regardless of where their website resides....
  • dan shipe: Hey, me again. What about possible exploits to this system? Adwords must evaluate the geographic region based on the IP address of the...
  • Mark Matsusaki: I think I'm in agreement with the previous posting in that ROI is the metric used by many decision makers to measure the value of...
  • George Michie: Thanks for your comments Ophir, you raise excellent points. Particularly as Geo-targeting competition in different areas moves...
  • SEO Services: Nice Post. Thanks for sharing this information with us.

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