Yahoo has decided to drop some knowledge on Yahoo Search Marketing advertisers about a tool it has that it says will speed up their campaign optimization. If you are not familiar with it, it’s called the Bulksheet.

Warren Buffet may eat a banana right before he buys a yacht, but luxury yacht builders would be making some pretty bad conclusions if they tried to connect the two events.  A session at SES San Jose examined whether or not the practice of last click attribution (which often points to paid search) fails in a similar manner.

On Friday, the Interactive Advertising Bureau announced that the US had reached $5.5 billion in online ad revenue for the first quarter. This was down a bit from last year, but that’s not too bad considering the state of the economy. In fact, you’d be hard pressed to find other ways to advertise your business that are as cost-effective.

Companies that have made it this far should feel hopeful about the future; we may finally be coming out of the recession.  Not everything’s back to normal, though – just ask General Motors – and so if you’re in the position of needing to justify the use of paid search (or just wanting to get better at it), a session at SMX Advanced aimed to help.

Microsoft has posted a FAQ page for adCenter advertisers wondering just what Bing has in store for them. One question pertained to Bing’s algorithm, to which Microsoft’s Carolyn Miller responded:

On behalf of the Federal Trade Commission, a federal court issued a restraining order against Yahoo, MSN, AllTheWeb, and Altavista to prevent the search engines from allowing mortgage finance scammers to use a government URL in sponsored search results, thus representing themselves as the operator of the site.

Advertisers using paid search may find that they have to adapt to the habits of searchers. And there have been indications that searchers are using longer queries to find what they are looking for these days.

comScore shares some rather interesting data showing that the number of paid clicks has grown 3 times slower than the total number of queries in the US since January 2007. Look at these graphs:

Research from Hitwise indicates that online retailers in the UK are seeing less traffic from paid search efforts and more from social networks. Paid search traffic has fallen over the last year – the percentage of all UK Internet visits to online retailers dropped from 10.1% in March ’08 to 8.9% in March ’09 according to Hitwise’s Robin Goad.

Average cost-per-click in the US declined last year on the big three search engines according to research from Efficient Frontier. Google’s fell 14%, Yahoo’s fell 16%, and Microsoft’s fell 28% over a year’s time (via CNET). Essentially the study indicates that less money was spent per search ad.

A study from McPheters & Company in co-operation with Condé Nast and CBS Vision found that magazines and TV ads are more effective than online ads. The study looked at 30-second TV ads, full-page 4-color magazine ads, and Internet banner ads in standard sizes.

They used eye-tracking software to determine the circumstances for when online ads were actually seen by participants. Highlights of the study include:

Google has conducted a study looking at how paid search affects TV viewing habits. The results are pretty interesting.

Adam Stewart, Google’s Industry Director for Media & Entertainment tells WebProNews that the research confirms that paid search is an effective way to build traffic for a network’s website and, as a result, increase viewership for content like online video.

When dealing with Google AdWords campaigns, advertisers have several options for selecting keywords. PPC expert and Founder of ClickEquations Craig Danuloff talked with me about when to use each one, and provided some advice about getting the most out of your campaign on a limited budget.

Chris Crum: When should advertisers use Exact Match?

So, while perusing Google’s Hot Trends today I noticed a particular brand of digital camera was one of the top gainers in search queries: the Polaroid T730 Compact 7mp digital camera. Curious as to what’s so special about it, I googled it, only to embark on one frustrating journey.

No double-digit click increases for Google again in comScore’s assessment of paid click activity, as the firm found a mild 2.7 percent year over year rise in March.

Please welcome Google to the damned-if-I-do-damned-if-don’t club. The superiority of search results is what led to Google’s dominance, and investors have pressured the company to get back to its core competency while raising revenue. As soon as they do, though, retailers pitch a fit because things become too fair.

Companies hoping to ride out a recession may be able to rely on paid search advertising, according to a new report.  Natural search shouldn’t be forgotten, though, and paid search campaigns are likely to cost more than they have in the past.

Frantic speculation that a softening economy may be causing Google’s paid click numbers to suffer should be taken back a notch.

Unlike another well-known News Corp property, MySpace, the Wall Street Journal opened its search advertising opportunity to Microsoft.

The 4th annual SEMPO State of the Search Marketing Industry survey is now open. If you work client side, agency side or independent, be sure to take this survey and make your voice heard.

Canadian revenues from online advertising hit C $1.01 billion (US $894 million) in 2006, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau of Canada, a jump of 80 percent in one year.

How did I miss this post by Steve Rubel? Tired of doomsaying in the Web 2.0 bubble realm, he recently predicted an impending recession for poor old Google, based on several factors.