Google set to overtake Yahoo for top display advertiser

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Search and social marketing agency Greenlight expects search giant Google to overtake Yahoo and become king of display advertising by the end of the year. Greenlight also predicts 2012 will be will be the year of social link building and that social media sites will take on a multi-faceted identity.


2011 was a busy year for the Search Industry with Google acquiring Invite Media and Teracent. In early December, Google officially launched its DoubleClick Search V3 platform – DS3 – a bid management program  which combines Yahoo and MSN into an AdWords type interface. Google is making significant investment in the DoubleClick platform, specifically DoubleClick for Advertisers and the Exchange.  So will online advertisers really need to invest elsewhere when Google is pretty much geared up to be the one-stop-shop?”

“Google’s noteworthy acquisitions and investments in 2011 combined with the mighty AdWords suggest that by the end of 2012, not only will 90 per cent of advertisers’ Search budgets be in AdWords, but also that this trend is set for display,” says Hannah Kimuyu, Paid Media Director, Greenlight.

What users search for can tell search engines about the strength of a brand, because the strength of the brand directly influences those searches. As such, Greenlight says that now, social media is the best means of influencing brand perception online. At the same time, more and more marketers are admitting that social media can power up search engine optimization (SEO) campaigns, by increasing the speed of accrual and the volume of natural links pointing to a site.

“It is time to stop thinking of SEO as a bubble, time SEO becomes more than SEO, more than just links”, said the report. “It is SEO=Digital PR. SEO=your brand. This year, marketers who think like that when planning their campaigns will win, and those who do not, will be ‘also-rans.’”