Today I spoke on a panel at the Search Insider Summit called "Managing Search in an Uncertain Economy" (Lee Odden liveblogged the session here) I specifically wanted to look at trends among our financial services clients, which would be the first to react to market conditions and could indicate how the search engines might be affected if an economic downturn might occur.
It turns out that spend has grown 35% from November 2006 to November 2007 among the financial services clients we have had at least a year. Spend normally drops for many of these clients between October and November due to decreased consumer interest. A quick look at Google Trends shows this seasonal decline. Our financial services client spend was down 12% from October - November this year. Similarly, it dropped by 14% from October to November last year. That similar seasonal decline combined with the 35% overall growth rate leads me to believe that we don't need to worry, at least not yet.
What lenders and other financial companies are doing though, is getting smarter about where they put their dollars, and monitoring their campaigns more closely. One way Efficient Frontier helps clients increase revenue is by optimizing where they are spending their dollars. Not surprisingly, it's headed toward Google, as you can see on the chart below. Year over year (November 06 vs. November 07) spend on Google was up 55%, MSN up 13%, and Yahoo down 6%. In November 07, Google accounted for 74% of our financial services search engine spend, up from 63% in November 06. When will this growth slow down??
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