While I’m a little late in reporting this, I still felt it was worth a mention. In November, Doubleclick released their Q3 Search Advertising Trend Report, focusing on pay per click.

Amongst the key findings (and bear in mind that holiday season factors aren’t taken into consideration)

- Cost per Keyword has risen, as did Cost Per Click

- Keyword rank distribution is changing; competition may have played a role, but DoubleClick states it’s more likely due to changes made by the search engines. Given that Google’s Jagger update really set the cat amongst the pigeons after this survey, it will be interesting to see the next report.

- There appears to be increased value for lower-ranked keywords. My own guess on this one is that with the more popular keywords in competitive markets now only available to marketing execs with cash to burn, it’s left the rest of us squabbling over what’s left.

.. and the really interesting bit:

- Performance on keywords that generally aren’t as popular is improving; this has been most apparent in high ranking keywords, but not the number 1 slot.

Read the DoubleClick Q3 Search Advertising Trend Report

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