Google is the market leader with highest share in the search advertising spend. According to the study by Efficient Frontier, for the second quarter of 2008, Google has 77.4% of US search advertising spend which includes a small percentage of contextual ad spend. When it comes to the non-US search ad market, Google has dominance over the Europe market with more than 90% of the market share and in Japan it is facing a decent competition from yahoo.



•Google dominates US search ad market

Google is dominating the search advertising market in US as it has the highest market share compared to that of its competitors. According to the study, for the second quarter of 2008, Google had 77.4% of search ad spend in US, which also includes 2.8% of contextual ad spend. The other competitors like yahoo had 17.6% with 0.2% of content and Microsoft has 4.8% share of search ad spend. Google is the market leader in US with significantly higher share in the search advertising market.

•Cost-per-click rates for Google are higher than its competitors

Google cost-per-click rates are higher than its competitors, about $0.70 on average, against Microsoft with $0.60 and yahoo around $0.50. Google leads over its competitors though its cost-per-click (CPC) rate has dropped in the past two quarters of 2008. Yahoo also dropped in the two quarters of 2008 whereas Microsoft slightly improved in its CPC rates in the second quarter of 2008.

•Google search ad market out of US

Google also leads search ad market out of US, except in few countries like China, South Korea, Russia & Japan. The market share of Google in the countries like US, Australia, UK and primarily in Europe (excluding UK) is significantly higher than its competitors. Google has dominance over the Europe market with more than 90% of the market share and facing a decent competition in Japan from Yahoo as it is the only major competitor.

Google has sustained its position as the market leader in the search advertising market as it significantly takes lead over its competitors with higher amount of actual earnings and overall search spend. Its dominance is higher in the western countries and is facing a decent competition in the other countries from Yahoo.