Paid advertising spend in the US search engine space grew 12.6% year-over-year in Q1 2011, according to [pdf] a new report from IgnitionOne. This figure was up slightly from year-over-year growth of approximately 11% in Q1 2010 and substantially better than negative year-over-year growth of about -2% in Q1 2009.
Financial Services, Retail Lead Q1 2011 Paid Search Spend Charge
Although all verticals produced year-over-year paid search spend growth of 12.6% in Q1 2011, that growth was led by strong increases from financial services and retail marketers. IgnitionOne data indicates these two verticals increased paid search spend 38.4% and 24.2%, respectively.
QOQ Spend Feels Post-Holiday Blues
Quarter-over-quarter (QOQ) paid search spend was down 16.5% in Q1 2011, following the holiday season. IgnitionOne analysis shows that quarterly declines are typical in Q1, following the strong advertising increases that generally occur during the holidays.
Looking at the three biggest US search engines, paid spend on Google declined 19.2% QOQ in Q1 2011, coming off sharp increases in Q4 2011. QOQ spend on YaBing (IgnitionOne has been combining the two engines since October 2010, as Yahoo search functionality is powered by Bing) declined a much more moderate 3.8%.
YaBing Share Rebounds in Q1
YaBing’s share of paid search spend rebounded to 20.2% of all spend in Q1 2011, up from 17.4% in Q4 2010. This represents a rebound to YaBing’s market share in Q3 2010 (20%), just prior to the holidays.
IgnitionOne data indicates in Q4 2010, marketers invested heavily in Google and decreased investments in YaBing, likely due to the uncertainty around the Yahoo/Bing transition. Now that the crunch time of the holiday season is over, marketers have increased their share of spend on YaBing back to pre-Q4 2010 levels.
However, IgnitionOne points out the combined Yahoo-Bing share in Q1 2011 is still down YOY (from 22.1% in Q1 2010), as the combined entity has struggled to gain volume, which will be critical for its future growth.
Google’s market share dropped to 79.8%, from 82.6% in Q4 2010, a decline that puts the engine back at its pre-holiday share of spend.
comScore: Americans Search More YOY in Feb.
Americans conducted substantially fewer online core searches in February 2011 than in the prior month but more than in February 2010, according to recent comScore qSearch data. The roughly 16.9 billion core searches conducted during the month represents a 9% drop from almost 18.6 billion in January 2011, but an almost 17% increase from 14.5 billion in February 2010.
Google maintained its lead with almost 11 million core searches, down 8% from about 12 million the month before but up about 16% from roughly 9.5 million a year earlier. Number two core search provider Yahoo lost the largest percentage of its month-over-month core search total, 12%, dropping from 3.3 billion to 2.9 billion.
About the Data: This report tracked more than 60 billion impressions and more than 1billion clicks on Google, Yahoo and MSN/Bing from January 1, 2006 through March 31, 2011.
