Led by Google and aided by the Summer Olympics and national elections, search ad spending will grow 27 percent to $19.51 billion in 2012, according to a new eMarketer report. By 2016, U.S. search spending could approach $30 billion.
According to eMarketer:
- Search ad spending will continue slow, consistent growth through 2016.
- Google will increase its paid search dominance in the U.S. Google is expected to take a 77.9 percent share of ad revenues this year, and that number will increase to 79.8 percent by 2014.
- Microsoft will grow, but remain a very distant second. This year, Microsoft is expected to have a 7 percent share of search ad revenues, and by 2014 grow its share to 8.7 percent. Google’s $20.28 billion in revenues will dwarf Microsoft’s $2.21 billion in search ad revenues.
- Yahoo and AOL will see their share of search ad revenues erode. Yahoo is expected to fall from 4.5 percent in 2012 to 3 percent in 2014, while in the same time period AOL will fall from 1 percent to 0.6 percent.
- By 2014, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and AOL will account for 92.1 percent of all U.S. search ad revenue and 44.3 percent of all U.S. online ad revenues (up from 90 percent and 43 percent in 2011).
And as we reported yesterday, U.S. mobile ad spending is expected to grow past $2.6 billion in 2012, also according to eMarketer.