Paid Search Spend—and CPCs—Continue to Accelerate over 2010 into Black Friday

Posted by Ryan Hornacek, Analyst

For the fourth consecutive week, aggregate paid search spend for our retailer clients continued to rise over 2010.  In fact, during the week of 11/6 to 11/12, spend was up 82% over the same week last year.  This continues the week-over-week increases in YoY spend: 38% increase (10/16 to 10/22), 55% increase (10/23 to 10/29), 68% increase (10/30 to 11/5), and 82% increase (11/6 to 11/12).  The big take-away is that we’re seeing heavier investment coming earlier this year than last.  This is a common theme—online shopping and holiday marketing campaigns start earlier and earlier every year.  It will be interesting to see whether these growth rates sustain through this week and next week during the big shopping days of Thanksgiving and Black Friday.

Additionally, with increased spend comes increased competition.  For the third consecutive week, cost-per-clicks (CPCs) are up over 2010.  During the week of 11/6 to 11/12, CPCs were up 26% over the same week last year.

The below graphs show the increases in CPCs and paid search spend vs. 2010.  As you can see, CPCs and paid search spend have been rising steadily over the last few weeks.   This data is from our retailer clients only and includes all engines:

*The data in this week's benchmarks has been re-balanced from last week's to compensate for year-over-year changes in individual program-level strategy that we feel are not representative of the search strategies of the retail industry as a whole.