According to performance agency Merkle, ad spend growth on Google Search ads has slowed while desktop spend on Microsoft Advertising has had its strongest quarter in over three years in the second quarter of 2019.
Based on the report by Merkle, the gain that Microsoft Advertising saw came mostly because of its deal with Verizon Media to handle all search ad inventory access its properties, including Yahoo. This means that Google had a loss, which had been serving Yahoo shopping ads since 2016.
US spending on Microsoft Advertising shopping ads has increased by 54% year over year. Microsoft Advertising spend has grown by 8% year over year compared to the combined results of Bing Ads and Yahoo Gemini the prior year, reversing two consecutive quarters of negative growth.
Google Shopping spend saw a decrease. It saw a spend of 38%, which is a deceleration from 41% in the first quarter of 2019. “Yahoo dropping Google’s ads in favor of Bing Product Ads at the end of Q1 appears to have had a meaningful impact,” said Merkle.
Among the Merkle client base, US search spend increased by 14% year over year in the second quarter 2019. Google Ads search spend rose by 15% year over year, and Microsoft Advertising spend grew by 16%. Google click volume increased by 10% and CPCs rose by 4.5% from the previous year.
