University of Phoenix is Google’s Largest Advertiser
November 6, 2012 • Article by Dan Fallon
I’ve just been looking through SpyFu’s analysis of who Google’s top advertisers are globally and then within the UK.
Google doesn’t publish any data and so all stats have to be calculated by 3rd parties based off either search results scraping or through ISP & panel data . There are also massive guesstimates for CPCs – these vary hugely by advertising sector and move with market dynamics – if you aren’t active within a sector they are hard to predict.
The top advertiser surprised me. The University of Phoenix is apparently spending $383,724.26 per day meaning $11.5m per month & $140m per year with Google. A huge amount but less so when you start thinking it through.
Education is a competitive market & the University of Phoenix is a for-profit institution with 319,399 undergraduates & 61,400 postgraduates according to Wikipedia. If you assume $15k dollars in fee & other revenue per student you get an annual turnover of $5.7bn.
In the UK according to SpyFu UK our largest advertisers are Ask, Amazon, Info & ebay…all appear for masses of searches typically with low “bottom feeder” bids (possibly a bit harsh on Amazon who tend to bid more aggressively & with greater focus on relevance).
After these its the more predictable travel & finance players (money Supermarket, CMC Marklets, Booking.com etc.). Interestingly (Search Star has unusual expertise in Legal clients) there are also a fair few solicitors & legal lead aggregators. National Accident Helpline are apparently spending £835k per month & Fentons £749k per month.