Search tech and service firms continue to pump out “state of the market” reports in advance of this week’s Q308 earnings announcements from Google (NSDQ: GOOG) and Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO), and the latest two from Efficient Frontier and Covario paint a murky picture for the future of search spending in the U.S.
– Overall growth slowing throughout 2008: Efficient Growth says search spending by non-financial services advertisers slipped by about 3 percent from Q2 to Q3, while spending by financial advertisers dropped nearly 7 percent. Year-over-year, that trend is even more pronounced, with financial services spending down by nearly 20 percent.
– Economy to negatively impact spending: Covario’s report only dealt with the budgets of big tech brands like HP and Lenovo, but also reflected a slowdown–this time with year-over-year spending growth rates. Advertiser spending grew just 32 percent from Q307 to Q308, in contrast to the 59 percent growth from Q207 to Q208. Craig Macdonald, Covario’s VP of marketing and product management:
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