Covario released its Global Search Advertising Spend Analysis for Q3 2011 and found that global spend on paid search campaigns grew 24 percent from over the same time period in 2010 and 26 percent over the previous quarter in 2011.
North American specifically had a strong quarter with spending increasing 21 percent, as both and Google and Bing made investments in personalizing search to greater extent. As a result, search marketing campaigns – both paid and unpaid – must be more aggressive in tailoring their campaigns to searcher behavior.
Social media marketing has also benefited from the increase in paid search. Seventy-percent of companies included in Covario’s study named Facebook as a critical element of their search marketing campaigns – both paid and unpaid.
Covario analyst Craig Macdonald reported that, despite economic struggles around the world, marketers don’t think financial woes will impact the search industry too heavily.
„There is some trepidation about the impact of a potential global financial market slowdown and its impact on search,“ Macdonald said in the release. „Most of our customers believe this will have a muted impact on paid search. Search’s measurability and position at the bottom of the marketing buying funnel make it quite resilient to market gyrations. The impact tends to be on CPCs, which go down faster than decreases in growth rates on impression volume.“
In terms of unpaid search, companies are being more aggressive in boosting their campaigns, frequently turning to content for SEO. Brafton reported this week that more than 80 percent of businesses included in a HiveFire study use content marketing or are in the process of implementing a campaign.
