Competitive intelligence agency AdGooroo released a new report that indicates there has been a decrease in active advertisers for Google, despite projected Q4 gains.
“Google experienced a quality purge this quarter and banned what we believe to be more than 30,000 advertisers, accounting for about 5.3 percent of its active advertiser base,” said AdGooroo Founder and CEO Rich Stokes. “While this typically signals a negative impact on revenues, AdGooroo also tracked increased competition for ad placement, resulting in higher ad prices for Google and unusually high click through rates. Google seems to be taking advantage of a strong Q4 to make some quality improvements.”
The report states that ad coverage, which is steadily climbing and has been for the past 12 months, took a sudden dive in December and dropped almost 10 percent; from 5.48 ads per keyword in November to 4.97 in December.
The firm states that the fourth quarter has been strong for Google and they’re expecting it to be the case again this year. “This seasonal improvement has less to do with total search query volume (which historically is about the same as November), and more with increased competition for ad placement (higher ad prices) and unusually high click through rates,” says AdGooroo.