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RKG helps retailers bring qualified traffic to their sites via large scale paid search campaigns. (We also help retailers improve site conversion via page redesign and multivariate testing, but this post is about PPC.)

For over a year, we’ve been reporting our aggregate agency spend going to each engine.

Expressing share in percentage terms removes seasonality and our agency’s growth from the statistic.

The bulk of our clients are online retailers, with a heavy emphasis on B2C.

Most of our client buy clicks from a direct response perspective — not so much interest in branding, and unlimited budget for clicks which meet their performance threshold.

Here are our March data:

paid search market share march 2008 google yahoo microsoft graph

[table]

While some clients establish strict monthly spend limits, they’re in the minority; more clients budget by performance.

So, our portfolio bid optimization algorithm and our search analysts usually don’t pay much attention to a priori budgets by engine.

We don’t usually care which engine gets how much ad spend. What we do care about is getting as many high-converting clicks for our clients that we can.

So what about last month?

March was another month where, in aggregate, Google took another tiny slice of the pie away from Yahoo.

This continues a slow but steady trend we’ve been watching for some time.

Link: earlier posts on same topic

Link: All Clicks Aren’t Created Equal: Q&A With Danny Sullivan over at SEL

Standard disclaimer: these data represent just our agency’s experience, and may not generalize beyond online retail. Your mileage may vary.

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Comments

  1. Chris Zaharias, April 4, 2008:

    It’s always good when SEMs put aggregate data out there; Comscore’s data is simply too risky to put blind faith in.

    Would I be right to assume this is a >$25M/qtr same size?

    Cheers,
    Chris

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  • Curtis: Great study George! Along the same lines, I’m trying to find a study about which search engines have the highest conversion ratios....
  • registry cleaner: Thank you. I found your division of total time spent on priorities very useful!thanks again
  • George Michie: Ophir, thank you for your marvelous comment. I agree with you. Brand building is an important element of marketing, and a very...
  • Ophir: Hi George, Interesting post, very intereting. I find myself struggling with this issue day in day out and I mostly agreee with your...
  • Kevin Hillstrom: Oh, you are on to something! I can promise you that.
  • George Michie: I am eager to see what you’re thinking on the topic, Kevin. Some of our early early data scratchings suggest that we may be...
  • Kevin Hillstrom: This will teach me to not schedule posts … I have a half-dozen similar posts coming in the next week!!
  • TAMMY LANGWORTHY: I WISH TO CANCEL MY FUN FAMILY REWARDS AS I DON’T USE IT VERY MUCH. THANK YOU TAMMY LANGWORTHY
  • George Michie: Thanks Dave, it is a hot topic for good reason. I’ve had some interesting conversations with Kevin Hillstrom about his...
  • Mark Ballard: I certainly don’t mean to discourage advertising with Yahoo at all as there’s plenty of value to be had there. Healthy...
  • Nathan L.: I have thought about advertising on Yahoo! for some time, but news like this makes me want to just stick with Google. Good useful...
  • Dave 2.0: George, thanks for the callout on the survey. I’m VERY interested in the topic.
  • Nancy Maiewski: Another charge on my J.C.Penney statement for $9.95 for Family Fun Rewards! This isn’t the first time I have opened my bill...
  • George Michie: David, I’m sure Shop.org will make the results available to participants. We’re talking about presenting them at the...
  • David: It’s not clear from the survey whether participants get a free copy of the results. Do you know?

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