Prepare Your Clients for the Shake-​up in the Paid Search Market

BY Kathy Crosett
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Marketers’ commitment to online advertising shows no sign of slowing down. At least 70% of surveyed businesses say they’ll increase digital ad budgets in 2019, and they’re particularly bullish about search. The numbers come from the RBC Capital Markets’ survey of over 1,700 ad industry pros. The report was recently summarized on MediaPost.

Search Spending

Currently, seven out of 10 businesses already earmark 20% of their ad budgets for digital. The RBC survey results also indicate that marketers strongly believe in the power of search. At least 33% of marketers allocate over 20% of their digital funds for search marketing. Another 12% of marketers give up over 40% of their digital budget to various forms of search.

Battle for Market Share

Not surprisingly, Google is the beneficiary of a significant chunk of this spending. The search giant’s influence in the market that is so strong it is expected to generate $96 billion in ad revenue in 2018. By comparison, Facebook will likely pull in $54 billion in ad revenue this year.

These tech companies will soon be feeling the heat from another competitor. RBC analysts noted that Amazon is projected to score between $7 and $8 billion in ad revenue this year. The giant company only recently started to focus on digital advertising and predicts that by 2021, it will achieve sales of about $16 billion in that sector. A large percentage of Amazon’s ad revenue will come from search.

That kind of growth rate puts Amazon within spitting distance of YouTube’s search ad revenue capabilities. Currently, only about 5% of marketers give 30% or more of their search budget to YouTube. And 27% snub the video site completely. That reaction could stem from marketers’ worry about having their ads appear next to brand-​damaging content.

Here’s how surveyed marketers ranked search platforms in terms of ROI:

  • Facebook
  • Google
  • Twitter
  • Instagram
  • YouTube
  • LinkedIn
  • Amazon
  • Yahoo
  • Snapchat
  • Pinterest

Your Action Plan

With 2019 fast approaching, you should ask your clients about their paid search plans. Do they plan to put all their eggs in one basket? Are they interested in experimenting with something they haven’t tried before? Have they been paying for any local search marketing? You can find out some of what they’ve been doing by running a Digital Audit at AdMall from SalesFuel. That report will also show clients how well their efforts align with the search habits of their target audience. Once you reveal their shortcomings, present a digital marketing services solution to boost their revenue.


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