Google Loses Large # of Search Advertisers in Q4 08, but is Reclaiming Lost Ground in 2009

Despite news to the contrary Google witnessed a large loss of advertisers at the end of 2008. With the lion's share of the especially hard hit SMB market, this shouldn't be too surprising, but the scale was impressive. From Nov 08 to Jan 09, Google's number of active advertisers declined by 32,000. To put this in perspective, Microsoft only has 46,000 active search advertisers in the AdQuants 500,000 keyword sample.

However, Google appears to be turning the corner. After Google lost 10% of its advertisers from November to January, it has reclaimed half of those loses to bring its total number of online advertisers to nearly 300,000 and it now has an even greater share of active online advertisers in March 2009 (80%) than it did in November of 2008 (79%).

Even more impressive is how Google dominates the share of online advertisers: fully 80% of online advertisers advertise with Google, compared to just 33% for Yahoo and a mere 12% for Microsoft.

Google Advertising Volume Dipped in 2009 but Coming Back

The volume of keywords purchased from Google on the Top 500K Keywords declined through the end of Q4 2008, but has been coming back in the latter half of Q1 2009. Google is alone among the competition in that it is pulling out of the stall in advertising--Yahoo and Microsoft continue to struggle.

For data on Google's Biggest Advertisers and Google's Biggest Search Spenders see AdQuant's monthly Top 100 Reports.

AdQuants Measurement Methodology

AdQuants tracks a half million keywords on Google, Microsoft and Yahoo on a monthly basis, capturing keyword, advertiser, ad position and advertisement among other parameters. Unique domains are assumed to be unique online advertisers.

For custom analysis of our online advertiser data please contact us at 866-427-0202.