Search engine still dominates EMEA market

Is it a good news or a bad news? You tell me !
Search engine ad spending was expected to grow 26% in 2006, in reality it grew by nearly 33% (need to check my numbers as no one -research or expert- really agrees on it), the bottom line is if you are in digital marketing and you are not doing anything around search, something is really wrong .

Budget allocation for Google amounts to $3.7 million; $4.6 million for Yahoo!; and $4.6 million for MSN. [Outsell, Inc, February 2006]. Look at how Google stock performed in the last 3 years, it will give you an indication on how wealthy and lucrative the business is. I wish I had invested some money in it myself

Keyword costs, are rising due to the popularity of this performance-based auction-model of advertising, but according to Forrester, cost will be up to five-times more expensive in the US than in Europe this year.
Google’s audience has grown almost 2.5 times the rate of search’s. It now has almost 3 times the audience of Yahoo Search. [Source: Hitwise via Search Engine Watch, March 2007], this is just amazing. 10 years ago Yahoo! had an asset to play, a shame really.
Looking at market shares, Google had a 71.6% share of the global search market between August 2006 and January 2007. Giving Yahoo!, MSN and alike less than 30% to play with, and far from going down the trend is going up for Google, some even say the beast would currently have 77%.
Google made $10.5 billion in ad revenue in 2006, up 75% from 2005. [Source: SEMPO, 2007]

81% of global internet users (256m) visited a search engine in December 2006. [Source: Nielsen/NetRatings via Search Engine Watch, March 2007].

Search engine use grew dramatically in France (27% up YoY) where Google marketshare is now approaching 90%  and Spain (21% up YoY), ahead of the US (8%), though the US remains the largest search market.
Search by far the most popular media in the UK (85% of web query starts with a search engine), France (83%) and Spain (83%). For the US, the figure is only 77%.