Google dominates ad server market, study shows

It will surprise no one that Google accounts for a lion's share of the ad server market. However, it may come as a shock that Microsoft holds only the equivalent of a lion's paw.

Attributor, a content-tracking company, analyzed ad server calls across 75 million domains in October. According to the data Attributor released this week, Google--through DoubleClick and AdSense--accounts for 56.5 percent market share.

Meanwhile, Microsoft's equivalent figure hovers at 3.8 percent. Yahoo came in behind Google with 9.7 percent. If Microsoft and Yahoo ever end up combining forces, they still wouldn't touch Google.

A server call, by the way, is the "moment when a Web site requests an ad to serve up to a user. The study examined whose ad code was on that page," according to AdAge.com.

Here is Attributor's breakdown of the ad server market, as of October.

(Credit: Attributor)

DoubleClick and AdSense are definitely playing to different markets, according to Attributor's figures. DoubleClick dominated with larger sites, while AdSense did so for smaller sites.

It's not all good news for Google, though. Back in Janary, when Attributor last took a look at ad server calls, Google's AdSense and DoubleClick accounted for 69.7 percent share. That's a drop of more than 13 points.

Google didn't lose out to Microsoft or Yahoo, though. They also lost share. Instead, Google lost little bits to a lot of other players, including AOL and Revenue Science. The latter shot into the top five with 6.7 percent market share in October.

[coryschulz]

I'd like to see Google squash Microsoft, and I'd like to see Yahoo fall apart from poor management, and see Jerry Yang go over to work at Google. I'd also like to see Google work more closely with Facebook and then Yahoo take over the searches at MySpace.

[forever4now]

The thing I like most about Google is that they are constantly innovating. Apple should be given credit for that, as well.

Microsoft normally just sits on their piles of money, while everyone else does the hard innovation work and if/when something starts to catch on, they throw all their money and monopoly power at it, to try to gain control.

That's the reason it makes me happy, when I see statistics where even a company like AOL is above Microsoft in the list.

[BlitzBoy1120]

Very true. They try to take over whatever is the latest hit (iPod=Zune, PlayStation=Xbox, etc etc)

[Seaspray0]

Apple has nothing to do with google operations and is not the only company that can innovate.

[JCPayne]

Natalie you're a little late here. The whole Microsoft-Yahoo! merger too for example was never about eclipsing Google. If you read their merger material closely you would see that the combined entity would still trail Google by a wide margin. Microsoft's plan to buyout Yahoo was simply to get rid of one of their competitors and place it in their camp. At this point Microsoft's tiny market share is soo small they need to buy out competitors to get people to gravitate towards their ad network. They are in a chicken and an egg situation. If there's no sites in the Microsoft ad network, they can't very well charge companies a lot. But if they don't charge a lot they may not want to pay websites a lot of money to carry such heavy rotation of a few ads which would be a bargain for the amount of rotation they may get. SO Microsoft has no choice but to buy others and try to bulk up. Enter Microsoft-Yahoo! Yahoo! could seek out other deals though one of the big TV congloms. might be interested in it. Viacom, Sony Entertainment, AOL/CW, or one of Yahoos! closer partners may want to snap it up. AT&T, Verizon, British Telecom, Rogers Cable etc.

The best deal that makes the most sense is a merger with Ebay. Yahoo will bring more eyeballs to the arrangement, Ebay will provide a service that can turn those eyeballs into quick income. They could role out a unified Skype and Yahoo Instant Messaging network merged into a single IM network. PayPal would become another service in the combined company and that could replace the Yahoo Wallet product. Then Ebay also has other things that could be streamlined. Half.com, Overstock.com etc. could be streamlined into a single Yahoo! Malls site etc.. Yahoo's holdings would be a natural fit for many of Ebay's services.

[brian.lee]

The problem with Microsoft is that the buck always stops at Windows, everything they do is crippled on other platforms. Look as MSN messenger for MAC is was always far far behind in feature set for example we JUST got video conference and audio conference on MAC messenger. Most if not all of the Microsoft online services only work properely on Windows, where as Google goes that Extra mile and makes it work for Linux, Mac, different browsers. Even Apple is guilty of this I would much rather use Gmail than my .Mac mail, sometimes I wish Apple would just license Googles gmail interface it's so much faster and work on all browsers.

[EcuadorHomesOnline]

As I user, I much prefer searching from Live.com - I get much better search results than I do from Google. But as an advertiser, I get much better results from Google - plus INCREDIBLE tools. From my experience, Yahoo is the worst on both sides. I am still surprised that Microsoft's market share is so bad when their search results are almost always better.

[forever4now]

I can't recall a time I did not find what I was looking for with Google.

Google's results also include relevant videos, etc. and they have been scanning books, magazines, PDF documents, etc. to make them searchable using OCR (Optical Character Recognition), as well.

I think Microsoft and others have a lot of work ahead of them, to get to the level and sophistication of search results possible with Google.

[flickrz]

You are missing the point here. Double click gets this much share because of DART which is being used to serve ads on other websites too such as Yahoo, AOL, MSN etc. The real comparison would be in terms of dollars earned. Even with the largest marketshare DoubleClicks revenue was only $150 million at the time of closure of the deal with Google. That is paltry compare to MSN's $2 bill, Yahoo's $4 bill and AOL's $3-4 bill. Even AdSense's revenue is decreasing YoY to around $3-4 bill in 2008. And, AdSense isn't really comparison here. It is contextual text ads vs branded display ads served by DoubleClick, Yahoo, MSN, Platform-A (AOL) etc.

[Oldblueinca]

Dollars earned would be nice but their is nothing but speculative data here. This study does a good job showing who is getting the most eyeballs since it is based on audience. With Google winning with large publishers (DoubleClick) and small (Ad Sense), they are going to be extremely hard to displace.

I also beg to differ about leaving Ad Sense off - many sites are replacing display ads with contextual. Display ads will not go away but even companies like Yahoo are replacing display with text ads on their own pages

[flickrz]

Again you missed the point. DoubleClick provides ad serving technology to others. By itself; it doesn't either own the publishers or the sites where an ad is displayed. And, it doesn't make tones of money doing it compare to AdSense. In the display game it is about the quality of content and not the quantity as the AdSense. Also, how do you build a brand using adSense? Display advertisement is all about building brands online.

[kucingliar]

MS want to buy Yahoo to build image, not for resource or tech. Microsoft failure start from the failure of it's own browser itself, MS Internet Explorer. And then they didn't make a good approach into their main competitor. Take a look at Mozilla, Opera or Safari, their initial search is google not MS. Don't mention Crome, it's own google browser. MS boys must make a good approach toward them to arise their cut in these matter. And they have to make IE more appealing again within Internet user. Personally I kinda dislike them (MS), they've already "tax" almost every new PC out there, and then they want cut from ad that come to main other player business. Ah I'm sorry if a bit rude