Report: Retailers Move Bucks to Bing Amid Holiday Shopping Blitz

SearchIgnite, leading search optimization solutions provider and 360i sister company, recently released a whitepaper outlining key trends in retail ad spend in Q4. The company, which manages more than $400 million in paid search annually, drew data from its large pool of sophisticated retail advertisers.

Research showed that multi-channel retailers are increasing their U.S. paid search initiatives despite economic uncertainty, with spend up 7 percent in Q4 ahead of Black Friday. Each of the Big Three engines showed year-over-year spend increases from retailers, but Bing’s 47 percent boost represented the greatest gain. This was likely due to higher average order values (“AOV”) from shoppers converting on Microsoft’s engine.

Here are some of SearchIgnite’s key findings:

• Strong U.S. Retail Spend in First Half of Q4: U.S. search spend from existing retail marketers is up 7% YoY in the first half of Q4 across all major search engines (Google, Yahoo! and Bing).
• Conversion Rates on the Rise: In the first half of Q4, conversion rates were up 17%, a strong increase over this time last year and a hopeful sign that consumer confidence is on the rise.
• Retailers Increase Spend on Bing: U.S. retail marketers dramatically increased their search spend on Bing, up 47% YoY, seeing higher AOV from shoppers on Microsoft’s engine.

The full report is available for download at http://www.searchignite.com/about_research.aspx.