Pay Per Click Related Internet Statistics

36% of online ad spending goes to search engines

The online advertising and search markets are growing rapidly; of the $260 billion in total US advertising spend in 2004, less than $10 billion, or 4%, is online, with an expected annual growth rate of 13%. Search is now 36% of US online advertising and expected to grow 24% per year over the next five years, Merrill Lynch Equity Research claims.

link - Mar 22, 05 | 10:47 am - Explore the Search engines category

Top search engines and directories

Hitwise Competitive Intelligence tracked the most visited search engine and directories during the week ending February 19th, 2005. The average stay on the search engine and directory sites was 10 minutes 14 seconds, according to HitWise.

Paid search market shares: Google - 35%, Yahoo! - 31.8%, MSN - 16%

AlwaysOn Network quotes ComScore Networks research on paid search market shares. Google owns 35% of the paid search market and Yahoo with combined Overture, AltaVista and FAST properties owns 31.8%. MSN is currently at 16% of the paid search market, but it recently decided to dump Overture and start its own paid-search program.

79% of paid search money goes into 4 top categories

Paid search spending in the US is highly concentrated, according to JupiterResearch. Just four categories (retail, financial services, media and entertainment and travel) accounted for 79% of the $2.6 bln spent on paid search in 2004. Each vertical provides a rich landscape of opportunity and a blueprint for how other categories will develop.

Average customer acquisition cost for search is $7-10

Piper Jaffray estimates the average customer acquisition cost for search to be between $7 and $10, compared to $15 and $25 for Yellow Pages, $40 to 80 for e-mail and $60 to 80 for direct mail.

Half of manufacturers to market through search engines

Shipments of durable goods increased $4.2 billion for December 2004, up 2.1% from November. This increase capped a banner year of 10.5% growth and made 2004 the best year since the new standards established in lieu of NAFTA were implemented in 1992. To keep the fete running strong, marketing executives from 80 different US manufacturing firms said they plan on revamping or establishing e-business and online marketing ventures in the upcoming year. Half of those surveyed will be engaging in search engine marketing; slightly less said they would also be conducting e-mail marketing campaigns (45%) and 62% plan to recreate their websites in 2005.

Only 18% of Web users can distinguish between search result and advertisement

Only 38% of Web searchers know of the distinction between a search result and a sponsored ad placement, and of those, not even half - 47% - say they can always tell which are paid. That comes out to only 18% of all Web searchers knowing when a link is paid.

link - Jan 24, 05 | 7:29 am - Explore the Search engines category

Up to 500 retailers spent $50,000 on paid search monthly

Approximately 350 to 500 US retailers are now each spending $50,000 or more per month on pay-per-click, paid-search programs, in keyword campaigns that represent anywhere from 3,000 to 5,000 words each, estimates search engine marketing provider Efficient Frontier.

Chinese search engine market generated $113.6 mln in 2004

China's search engine market reached 940 mln yuan ($113.6 mln in US dollars) in value terms in 2004. The market is expected to growth at an annual speed of 60%-70% to hit 2.6 bln yuan by 2006.

$5.5 bln will be spent on search advertising in 2009

JupiterResearch estimates that search advertising and related services will outpace other segments of online advertising growing from $2.6 bln in 2004 to $5.5 bln in 2009. Search accounts for more than 30% of online advertising spending in the United States.