Wednesday 16 April 2008

Search marketing spend growth drops in Q1

Search marketing spend slowed last month, despite showing strong increases in the first quarter of the year.

New figures, released by SearchIgnite, has revealed that spend from marketers who had utilised paid search for over a year was up year-over-year in the first quarter across all engines by 28.5 per cent.

However, in terms of month-over-month performance, growth for this sector declined from 47.6 per cent in January to 33.5 per cent in February, dropping to 19.1 per cent in March.

Yahoo's share of spend grew last month to 24.2 per cent from 19.6 per cent at the end of 2007, while Google's share declined to 70.4 per cent in March from 74.5 per cent in the fourth quarter. MSN's share of search spend also fell in the first quarter from 5.9 per cent to 5.4 per cent.

Roger Barnette, president of SearchIgnite, said: "It was a stronger than expected Q1 for search marketing as advertisers continue to invest more money in the medium."

However, he added: "While search budgets have been relatively insulated from marketing budget cuts, some of the incremental dollars have been taken off the table."

Category: SEO

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