Leads generated on automotive manufacturer websites rose 4% during Q4 2017 compared with the prior quarter, but manufacturers managed to offset the lower engagement with higher traffic and promotional incentives in the final quarter of the year.

Seasonal demand for news about sports influenced media publishers' ranking in Q4 2017, but the top-ranking keywords were more related to current topics discussed in forums, tech circles, and financial markets.

eMarketer estimates that Google will report earnings on Thursday of $83.4 billion from advertising revenue in 2017. Amazon's repository of consumer behavior data will someday drive its annual ad revenue past Google's.

As costs per click continue to rise, Bing leads with a 29% year-on-year increase. Compared with Google, traditional paid search on Bing saw an improvement in click-through rates and average position, per iProspect's study.

Long-time Google engineer Steve Yegge is leaving the company. He says Google has become uninspiring and too focused on competitors instead of customers, who get "deprioritized" because their incentive structure is out of whack.

The biggest mistake companies make is not factoring in the cost of bad data. Only 17% of companies factor in the cost of bad data when calculating return on investments, according to the findings of a report from Radius and "Harvard Business Review."

The ad platform will launch as a pay-per-click campaign, similar to Shopping Ads, with a flexible account structure, meaning that marketers can organize the campaign for the hotel into groups, sub-accounts, and accounts with multiple levels of bidding.

If Google's or Bing's search engine didn't exist to act as a centralized search engine, this is how blockchain might create an ad network to serve search advertisements and aggregate content.

The Google Express marketplace will become a major push for Google in 2018, as it attempts to compete with Amazon and connect its AdWords advertising platform more closely with deliveries. Late last year the company integrated the service into Google Assistant and tied-in retailers such as Target.

The study shows that 53% of women reported they were more likely to buy clothing directly from a retailer's website, while 56% of men were more likely to purchase clothing from Amazon.