Retail Boosts Search Spend in Efficient Frontier’s Q4 2009 Report

Retail Boosts Search Spend in Efficient Frontier’s Q4 2009 Report

Tomorrow, Efficient Frontier releases their quarterly search report and we’ve got a sneak peek at the numbers.

Let’s dive in:

Search Spend

Google’s share rose to 74.5%, up from 73.9% in Q3 2009. Yahoo! lost 0.5% share, while Bing lost 0.2%.

Broken down by sector:

• Retail: Up 17% YOY
• Travel: Down 20% YOY, driven by weak CPC
• Finance: Up 2% YOY
• Auto: Up 2% YOY

Google dominates Retail with 82.7% spend, but is not as powerful in Finance, with *just* 60.1% spend. Yahoo! is stronger in Finance at 35.2%. Bing’s strengths are Travel and Autos at 6.8% and 6.5% share respectively. In fact, Bing’s growth in the Travel sector was a whopping 80% over last year.

Clicks

Overall, the click-through-rate (CTR) was down 40% since Q4 2008. This is likely due to comparison shopping features being added to most of the search engines.

With the decline of the CTR, share becomes even more important.

• Google’s share rose to 74.4%, reversing a downward trend since Bing’s launch.
• Yahoo! lost 3.4% share since Q3, coming in at 21%.
• Bing held steady, declining just 0.1% to 4.6% share.

However, click volume was a different story. Google’s click volume grew by 38% and Bing grew by 7%. Yahoo!’s click volume dropped.

Impressions

Impressions for retail queries increased by a whopping 90% over Q4 2008. Remember, more info is being included in the search results, so that explains the dichotomy between impressions and CTR.

Sales

Average transaction size was down 5% over last year, but up 5% over the last quarter. Ratio of orders per impression was down 30%, but keep in mind those in-SERP shopping features.

Projections

After analyzing the data, Efficient Frontiers offered the following predictions for the new year:

• SEM spend will grow 15-20% in 2010.
• Market competition should recover, spurring volume expansion with CPC.
• Ad exchange development will continue to align with search
• Bing is expected to grow 30% in 2010, giving them a 6-7% share of paid clicks.