A WebTrends survey of 132 search marketers at the Emetrics Summit found that 81% ran paid search campaigns on Google. Another 64% ran campaigns on Yahoo!, 49% on MSN, 18% on Ask.com and 12% ran campaigns on other search engines.
The majority of respondents ran 10,000 or fewer keywords in their paid search campaigns, with 22% saying they ran 1,000 to 10,000 keywords and 31% using one to 1,000 keywords.
Search marketers also said they used multiple metrics to evaluate their paid search campaigns.
"Traffic" was used by 44% of respondents. Over a third of respondents used "conversion," and "revenue" and "cost per action" were each used by 22% of respondents. Only 14% of marketers measured "profit" to discover how their campaigns went.
Respondents also said they used multiple search marketing analyst tools at the same time to gauge performance. Nearly 31% of respondents used Web analytics, while about 20% used Microsoft Excel and nearly 18% used bid management solutions.