The recession is cutting into the price advertisers are willing to pay to show their ads on search engines, according to a report released Tuesday.
Advertisers bid to have their ads shown next to search results, paying only when people actually click on the ad, but on average, this cost per click (CPC) in the United States is declining on all three major search engines, according to a study by Efficient Frontier. Comparing the first quarter of 2009 to the fourth quarter of 2008, Google’s CPC dropped 14 percent, Yahoo’s dropped 16 percent, and Microsoft’s dropped 28 percent.
