Covario: paid search is on the rise

A graph from Covario's Q2 report.

Covario, a San Diego-based SEO and search marketing firm, today released its quarterly Global Paid Search Spend Analysis report, which found that global search spending grew 17% during Q2 of 2012, says Charles Gaylord, the report's author and research analyst at Covario.

In addition, the report found that clicks due to paid search have increased 18% globally, and impressions have increased by 7% globally.

The projected year-to-date search marketing spend increase of 19% was surprising, Gaylord says. “We're continuing to track paid search growth in the high teens and low twenties, which is amazing,” he says.

Paid search is particularly important for e-commerce companies and retailers in B2B and B2C sectors, he says. “This is increasingly the case with the move to more mobile search as a result of the proliferation of new mobile device types, like smartphones and tablets,” he says. “Also, major brand marketers, especially those in the technology, consumer electronics, financial services, media and entertainment space” should find paid search an important aspect of their marketing business.

On a platform basis, the report found that Google still dominates search, taking up 86% of the market in search spend. Yahoo-Bing, although still struggling to take on Google, saw a 30% increase in paid search: 30% increase globally year-over-year and a 3% increase globally quarter-over-quarter.

“Paid search advertising grows at such large rates because of its measurability and resiliency, and we're already seeing it gain momentum again as we dig into the third and fourth quarters,” Gaylord says. Paid search will likely continue to grow throughout 2012, he says, largely due to one-off large events like the Summer Olympics and the U.S. presidential election.