Search Engine Advertiser Update – Q209
July 13, 2009

The leading story in search the second quarter has been the release of Microsoft’s new Search Decision Engine, Bing. With a launch backed by a $100 million advertising budget, everyone wants to know if Bing is gaining acceptance among consumers and advertisers.

While the details may vary depending on which source you consult, it is clear that Internet users are taking to Bing. According to Alexa, Bing is now being visited by 3.35% of the global Internet audience, placing it well within the top 50 sites on the Web. And our internal metrics indicate Bing is receiving approximately 22,450,000 visits per month. This is an unheard of traffic velocity for a new Web site launch.

Advertisers, however, appear to be adopting Bing at a much slower pace. We measured a 5.46% increase in first-page advertisers in May (just ahead of release,) but a 3.31% decrease in June. For the year ending June 2009, Bing appears to have grown its advertiser base by about 35%. Respectable, but not as high as Google’s 52% increase (Yahoo! grew only 14%.)

This may be better news than it sounds. Active pay-per-click advertiser counts have been holding steady at around 829,000 to 850,000 since January of this year (This stabilization is probably due more to the maturation of the industry than the economy, as paid search tends to be a highly profitable activity for most advertisers.) So it shows that at the very least, Bing is tempting many established pay-per-click advertisers to taste their service.