Amazon as the biggest paid search advertiser in the UK in 2016, with booking.com coming in second, according to new research.
Amazon.co.uk was the leading UK retailer in paid search advertising over the course of the last year according to new rankings released today by the Kantar Media company AdGooroo.
The study – which ranked the top 20 UK paid search advertisers based on Google.co.uk desktop text ad clicks on the top 50,000 keywords between January and December 2016 – revealed that amazon.co.uk generated almost 35 million clicks, over 8.5 million more than the next advertiser in the ranking.
The second biggest retailer in the list was travel site booking.com which generated 26.3 million clicks over the course of the year, followed closely by mobile phone network giffgaff.com with 25.9 million.
The top 20 ranking features five travel brands, including onthebeach.co.uk, Trivago, Expedia and Airbnb, but they are joined by companies across a range of sectors. Online takeaway service Just Eat featured highly in the ranking, with 21.4 million clicks. Telecoms companies, including giffgaff and BT, and fashion retailers such as ASOS and JD Sports also feature prominently within the top 20, along with price comparison site Moneysupermarket.com. The ranking also features two advertisers from the online bookmaking sector, William Hill and Paddy Power.
Some of the top keywords in the UK during 2016 based Google.co.uk desktop text ad spend include ‘car insurance’, ‘payday loans’, ‘casinos’, ‘travel insurance’ and ‘hotels’.
Eric Marcy, Chief Revenue Officer at AdGooroo, commented, “Our findings not only reveal the top paid search advertisers in the UK but also mirror the most popular industry sectors in the UK market: retail, travel and financial services. In particular, the presence of so many travel brands at the top of the ranking highlights a particularly competitive market for companies in this sector.”
Top UK paid search advertisers by clicks in 2016:
Methodology
AdGooroo measures paid search activity on more than 2.5 billion search engine results pages across more than 50 countries and 14 search engines. Our proprietary algorithms and methodologies utilize the search data we collect in conjunction with machine learning and advanced statistical modeling to accurately estimate in-market results at the keyword, ad and advertiser level.
The results of this report are based on a measurement of text ad clicks on the top 50,000 branded and non-branded keywords on Google.co.uk desktop between January and December 2016. Advertisers may be sponsoring additional keywords during this period that, if measured, would alter the findings of this report.