Comment by crowcroft
19 hours ago
Two issues with this.
- Search ad pricing is inelastic and auction based (supply goes down price goes up).
- A jump in traffic to DuckDuckGo does not mean Google is experiencing a decline in search volume. Number of queries per session has increased since launching AI Overviews.
> Search ad pricing is inelastic and auction based (supply goes down price goes up).
False. Advertisers have budgets and ROI targets. If Google cannot compete people will get their clicks elsewhere.
> A jump in traffic to DuckDuckGo does not mean Google is experiencing a decline in search volume. Number of queries per session has increased since launching AI Overviews.
But it does produce lower ROI for advertisers (in this case: CTR goes down because my ad is being shown to more people). Once user is on my landing page, my conversion rate is fine month on month (±1%), but my CTR on google got sharply worse by 5% since, and if it goes much further I'll stop completely on Google.
I doubt I am alone: Maybe others will jump ship sooner and the price will recover (demand goes down) but in either event Google is less net revenue, and given how aggressive their sales pushes have been I think it could be that big