Wonder

Research Outline

Prepared for Jonathan G. | Delivered March 8, 2021

Keyword and Topic Based Matches of Content and Advertising

Goals

To find evidence which proves or supports the idea that keyword and topic based matches of content and advertising is what powers the majority of advertising and large internet companies

Early Findings

Initial Research
Google make approximately 97% of its revenue from advertising, and in the fiscal year 2018, 70.7% of Google's revenue came from advertising on Google properties, which covers the search platform Google.com and Google AdWords, the pay-per-click online advertising platform that allows advertisers to display their ads on Google's search engine results page, based on the keywords. By comparison, only 14.7% of revenue resulted from advertising via Google Network Members' properties.
In 2019, global search ad spend was reported to be almost $106.5 billion, and this was second only to display ad expenditure.
In 2016, the search advertising market was the largest component of all digital advertising, with a 46% share, registering an expected CAGR of 9.4% up until the end of the forecast period to 2021.
 Big businesses using search and keyword advertising 
In 2014, Apple's pay-per-click (PPC) ad served for the search 'Apple iPad' was using the new Google AdWords feature image extensions. More recently, an online marketing blog estimated that Apple spends up to around $77,000 to $98,000 per month on PPC ads, and sometimes much more. A leaked report from as far back as 2010 suggested Apple was spending $1 million per month on Google AdWords
 Coca-Cola, IBM, Microsoft and Google were all amongst a list of large companies successfully using Google AdWords.
Overview
While it is clear that search ad marketing, keyword advertising and topic based matches represent a significant percentage of the total online marketing sector, there is difficulty in finding specific information to determine precisely to what extent and how significant this is.
There is enough available information to determine factors such as total revenue, spend, and growth, but there is a lack of information which directly compares the keyword search ad marketing to other types of digital online advertising.
In addition to this, while almost all large tech and big business companies employ the services of keyword advertising, which is clearly visible from online searches, most however do not disclose specifically what their spend is as a percentage of all advertising spend, nor do they publish return on investment figures.
In terms of studies and academic research on the subject of keyword advertising, most available online information provides details either of studies such as the most expensive keywords, or research into how to use keyword marketing successfully. Less information is available about the companies actually using keyword marketing and to what extent they are doing so.
Almost all the available industry statistics and information on keyword advertising relates to Google AdWords. Google currently controls 92% of the search engine market, and therefore all available information that has been found relates specifically to Google AdWords or Google search, with almost no information found on the non-Google search market.