Report: Yahoo Gains Marketers, Ad Share
SEM tool provider AdGooroo today released a report that explores ad coverage per keyword among the big three engines in Q1 2009; it's a hypothetical proxy for search revenues. The report concludes, among other things, that Yahoo has gained advertiser share …
Context & Ripple Effects
Yahoo has spent years fighting the perception that its paid-search business is second-rate: a 2006 survey found advertisers rating its ads below Google's and MSN's (advertisers rated its ads below Google's and MSN's), and it restructured its search-ad plans as far back as December 2005 to close the gap. The arc turned positive before Bartz even arrived — ClickZ reported Yahoo heating up in the search ad race while Google leveled off in October 2007, and Bloomberg logged Yahoo gaining internet search share at Microsoft's expense a month into the downturn.
First-order effects
- AdGooroo's Q1 2009 keyword-level ad-coverage data gives Yahoo its first hard third-party evidence of paid-search momentum since Carol Bartz took over as CEO in February, countering the narrative that advertiser spend was a one-way flow toward Google.
- Because AdGooroo measures advertiser participation per keyword rather than queries served, the report hands marketers a revenue-proxy that tracks where budgets actually sit, not just where traffic does.
Second-order effects
- Google and Microsoft now face an argument they cannot rebut with their own published figures — if ad-coverage proxies catch on among media buyers, both engines will be pressed to disclose more granular advertiser-count or keyword-level metrics to defend their rates.
- Rising advertiser counts on Yahoo keywords would put competitive pressure on Google's auction prices for shared terms, since more bidders on the same inventory mechanically raises cost-per-click across the big three.
Third-order effects
- If keyword-level coverage becomes an accepted proxy for search revenue, third-party SEM data firms like AdGooroo gain structural power as the arbiters of engine health — a role panels and self-reported traffic numbers have held until now, with all the gaming incentives that implies.
The trend: Search advertising is shifting from a traffic-share contest measured by panels to an advertiser-share contest measured by crawl-based SEM data, rewarding whichever engine converts query volume into funded keywords.