Performics, the performance marketing division of DoubleClick, conducted a study that found there have been sharp decreases in Yahoo search costs and continued growth of search campaigns driven in part by advertiser reinvestment.
The “DoubleClick Performics Q1 2007 Search Trend Report” is designed to track the evolution of search engine campaigns and provide a stable basis for comparative benchmarking and analysis.
Other key findings include:
- The prevalence of expensive keywords went up significantly, triggering growth in both average cost-per-click and average cost per keyword.
- Advertisers increased their number of active keywords by an average of 54 percent over Q1 2006.
- Average CPC grew more than average CPK, as these additional keywords with a higher CPC did not receive as many clicks as other, less expensive keywords.
- In direct-revenue-based campaigns, transactions grew 38 percent; sales grew 28 percent.
- Despite rising sales and transactions, overall ROI fell by 43 percent, in part because of rising costs and advertisers increasingly using search as a branding channel.
- While Yahoo transactions and sales are down, advertisers purchased fewer clicks and spent less overall to acquire them.
- Despite an overall drop in Yahoo CPCs, average rank improved since the Panama platform was put in place; the new platform appears to be doing a better job of showing more appropriate search results to the right audiences.
The DoubleClick report represents 50 actual paid search campaigns managed by DoubleClick Performics’ SEM experts using DART and DoubleClick Performics’ proprietary platforms.
