• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, July 14, 2009

The launch of Microsoft's new search engine, Bing, has shown little impact on their share of the paid search advertising market, according to a study released Tuesday. The "Q2 2009 U.S. Search Market Report" from SearchIgnite, a subsidiary of Innovation Interactive, reveals advertisers continued to spend 6% on Bing for the second quarter, where it has hovered for years as Live Search.

"Advertising dollars are a lagging indicator of query share, so we fell if Bing continues to improve their search query share the advertising dollars will follow," says Roger Barnette, president of SearchIgnite. "As impressions go up and users search more on Bing it will help them long term."

Barnette believes Bing first needs to focus on keeping people on the site, rather than on gaining media or advertising share. And that's the correct move to build the biz, he says. When search volumes increase, the ad dollars will follow.

The SearchIgnite report measures advertiser behavior across the industry. Yahoo showed declines in the second quarter, coming in at 17% of spend. Search shares declined 26%, compared with the year-ago quarter. Most of the share was lost to Google, which captured 77% of the dollars advertisers spent in the second quarter.

Multi-channel retailers began spending more for U.S. paid search campaigns between April and June 2009. In fact, budgets rose 36% compared with the year-ago quarter. Growth rose as the quarter progressed, with retailers increasing spend by 55% in June compared with June 08.

SearchIgnite didn't see a similar trend in other verticals, such as travel and finance. In aggregate, the amount companies spent in the United States for search declined 6.5% for the quarter, compared with the year-ago quarter.