It’s been reported by Microsoft that search advertising revenue has increased by 8 percent year over year, growing by $124 million, in the company’s quarterly earnings report released Thursday.
If we were to take traffic acquisition costs (TAC) out of the equation , search advertising revenue was up 10 percent year over year in the fourth quarter of its fiscal year, ending on June 30, 2017.
Microsoft said that the bump in search revenue was the result of higher search volume and improved revenue per search on Bing.
Even though this has been the growth message for the last year, a switch after noting the “continued benefit from Windows 10 usage” for several quarters. It would appear that, for several quarters, Bing’s ad growth rate has been stagnant.
With the Q2 FY17 earnings call in January 2017, Amy Hood, Microsoft’s CFO has reminded investors that“total search revenue growth will slow now that we’ve passed the one year anniversary of our Yahoo deal and the associated change in revenue recognition.”
The two companies reworked their rocky search partnership back in April of 2015, only five y ears into the 10-year deal. Yahoo can serve up to 49 percent of ads from its own Gemini platform or through other partnership deals.
This is what the growth trend for Microsoft’s search advertising revenue since Q2 FY15, which ended December 31, 2014.
