Paid Search: market trends and statistics

E-consultancy have an excellent 12 page report on paid search including the latest statistics (from the UK) and the market trends in paid search. It’s well worth downloading and is free after registering. Thanks to Danny Sullivan for including it in his “day in search” round up post.

Here’s a summary of the market trends that were identified. This was the output from a roundtable which had 5 UK organisations in attendance.

Market Trends

1. Ongoing concern about click fraud
2. Increased sophistication of bid management tools
3. Paid search becoming more like SEO due to the importance of landing pages
4. Increased use of paid search for brand building
5. Marketers more savvy about ROI and starting to exploit longer keyword phrases that are cheaper than generic terms
6. Search is being built into overall marketing plans and there is more recognition of the need for paid search to complement SEO and other marketing channels (online and offline)