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Online Ad PPC Spending Stabilises : Bing Showing Improvement

By Andrew Redfern @ 14th July 2009 9:37 am live

A new report released suggests that although online ad spends may have decreased over the past 18 months, the green shoots of recovery are becoming more and more promising.

Specifically the recorded ROI, return on investment, for a surveyed group of large American advertiser has shown an increase in ROI of 12% up to 129% in the past quarter. Based on 81 billion impressions the research shows real positives for the future of the online advertising industry.

Online advertising was hit hardest throughout 2008 with a 23% drop, this gap has now been reduced to 21%. The second quarter of 2009 is down only 3% against the previous year demonstrating a stabilisation of the industry spend, which many speculate is the precursor to a return to growth in the industry.

It appears that the group hit the hardest by the “credit crunch” are the SME advertisers. Advertisers spending less than $50k pm spending is down 41% from Q2 2008 to Q2 2009. It is thought that this decrease spend overall has lead to a natural increase in ROI as advertisers concentrate far more on the efficiency of their campaign in lieu of the larger budgets available in 2006-2007.

By far the largest gainers are Bing and yahoo, who unlike Google are actually taking a larger percentage of online spend than in Q2 2008 . Bing are up 0.1% and Yahoo 0.9% from the previous year, while Google have slipped back 1%.

If you are interested in learning how Internet Marketing can work for your website and want more information then contact Hit Search, Search Engine Optimisation and Pay Per Click experts, on 0845 643 9289.

comScore report Bing launch captures market share

By Andrew Redfern @ 18th June 2009 4:05 pm live

Web monitoring firm comScore are reporting a rise in Microsoft’s share of the search sector following the high profile re-branding of Microsoft’s search offering from Live to Bing.

The Bing share of the market has risen to 12.3% whereas it’s predecessor was clocking in at 9.1%. The search sector is an absolutely huge market and so this represents a significant rise.

Microsoft launched Bing in a blaze of publicity with some commentators putting the publicity budget at $80 – $100 million. Clearly this will have had an effect. They key is whether Bing can hold this market share after the initial interest wanes.

Also key to these figures will be the effect of Bing’s rise on market leader Google and Yahoo who occupy a distant second. Clearly it would take a monumental shift in market share for Google to be topled from it’s number one sport but it’s obvious that Microsoft are throwing their massive corporate weight being their search offering in order to capture a bigger percentage of the highly lucrative area.

Microsoft are giving the figures a cautious welcome with chief executive Steve Ballmer saying “We have had some very good initial response, I don’t want to over-set expectations. We are going to have to be tenacious and keep up the pace of innovation over a long period of time.”

It’s clear that the launch has had a positive effect and it will be interesting to see subsequent sets of figures to ascertain whether Bing will hold this market share and, perhaps more importantly, which of it’s rivals it is taking traffic off.

Microsoft Talks Kumbo

By Andrew Redfern @ 3rd March 2009 7:07 pm live

Microsoft Live Search’s General Manager Mike Nichols comments today about the recent news of how its new baby Kumbo is going through a test phase at the moment; Mike commented

Many of you have probably seen the press coverage in the last day or so about the internal testing Microsoft employees are doing on our search product. There’s a good deal of excitement brewing over this test, both internally and externally, which we’re always glad to see.

There have been lots of questions about why we’re not opening this test to the public. This sort of internal testing is actually fairly commonplace at Microsoft and something we do with many of our products before we decide to release things publicly. Our hope is that our employees will give us great feedback on our new features and that it all becomes part of the external experience soon.

There has also been a fair amount of speculation around the use of the Kumo brand and URL, and whether this means that we are rebranding Live Search.

We’re using the Kumo brand and URL for this test experience to make sure employees understand they’re in a test experience. We believe this will encourage more active feedback. As for rebranding, it’s something we’re still considering.

Interesting time ahead for Microsoft; the constant will they won’t they on the purchase of Yahoo (it is just me or it like a scene from Friends!) and on the unveiling of a new product in the making. Early stage look good but you do worry if Kumbo is actually going to give us something new and provide users with a better way more efficient way of searching. Whatever Microsoft lauch it will be interesting to see what kind of take up it receives.

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Yahoo and Microsoft show strong growth in October

By Andrew Redfern @ 27th November 2008 6:30 pm live

zdNet are reporting stronger than expected performances from the number two and three search engines Yahoo and Microsoft. comScore has released figures from October and it shows a 6% growth in the US search sector.

Of the 2.6 billion searches were conducted at home, work and universities Google swallowed up 63%, Yahoo had 20.5% and Microsoft 8.5%. The number of Yahoo searches was up by 9% on the previous month and Microsoft’s figure was up 8% on September.

Overall the total search figure was up 7% so Yahoo and Microsoft have increased their market share whilst Google’s has stayed steady. The main loser was AOL which saw a decline of 2%.

Would you like to know more about the search market? If so, contact Hit Search, SEO and Google adWords qualified PPC specialists, on 0845 643 9289. Remember, its a big world out there, make sure you become visible.

Microsoft to rebrand Live search as Kumo

By Andrew Redfern @ 24th November 2008 4:21 pm live

Rumours abound that Microsoft is to rebrand it’s online search engine in the near future.

Reports over at Search Engine Land highlight a new Microsoft registered website, www.kumo.com, that is reportedly under the same name servers as SEARCH.LIVE.COM.

A rebrand would not be surprising as the turmoil over at Yahoo coupled with their launching of Yahoo Glue would make this a perfect time for a relaunch.

Kumo is the Japanese for both ‘cloud’ & ‘spider’ so you can see the theme emerging however analysts are eager to point out that Microsoft’s third position in the search market is unlikely to be improved by just rebranding. As the launch of CUIL proved earlier in the year no amount of hype can take the user’s focus away from the core product for very long.

These latest reports follow on from the new message coming from Microsoft, it seems they corporation is focusing inwards and improving it’s own search offering rather than going out to acquire Yahoo.

Last Friday Microsoft announced the arrival of former Yahoo Search executive Sean Suchter and it’s thought that Mr Suchter will be focusing on Live Search at the Microsoft Search Technology Center.

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