Social Media and Marketing

The US search engine marketing (SEM) industry posted solid sequential and year on year growth for the fourth quarter of 2009.

Published: 20 Jan 2010

The US search engine marketing (SEM) industry posted solid sequential and year on year growth for the fourth quarter of 2009.

According to a report released by Efficient Frontier, spend in the retail sector grew 17% year on year (YoY) and 46% quarter on quarter (QoQ).

Travel continues its downward spiral as spend dropped 20% YoY and 25% QoQ, above the typical seasonal impact. CPCs have been dropping in travel for an extended period and consumer search volume (interest) is up only modestly. Efficient Frontier expects continued weakness in the travel category in 2010.

Trends by search engine

Google’s particular strength in retail helped them post strong gains in both spend and clicks in the quarter. Google’s share of clicks rose to 74.4% and reversed a downward trend in share since the launch of Bing. Yahoo! was the biggest loser in paid click share, giving up a full 3.4% since Q3 in moving from 24.4% to 21%. Bing held steady at 4.6% in Q4 vs. 4.7% in Q3.

Google’s share of spend also rose, but at a slightly slower rate, moving up from 73.9% in Q3 to 74.5% in Q4. While Yahoo! gave up significant share in clicks they lost only 0.5% in spend as a strengthening CPC at Yahoo! offset some of the click loss. Bing remained relatively stable in moving from 5.3% in Q3 to 5.1% in Q4.

This analysis was completed based on data from Efficient Frontier search engine marketing customers and the resulting Efficient Frontier’s Customer Index.