Traditionally, travel advertisers including online travel agencies are among the biggest search ad spenders on Google. That business tanked last year, but ecommerce-related search advertising outperformed thanks to the supercharged digital retail environment.

This has led to Facebook gaining some ground on Google in terms of the duopoly’s ad revenue share. This year, Google will account for 39.6% of total digital ad spend, and Facebook will account for 28.9%. In 2019, those proportions stood at 40.1% and 24.9%, respectively. WHAT’S IN THIS REPORT?

There is no global triopoly, but ecommerce is collectively challenging Google and Facebook. Google will claim 28.6% of the worldwide digital ad market this year, and Facebook will take 23.7%. The ecommerce heavyweights combined (Alibaba, Amazon, and JD.com) will take 15.9%. Read Next.

On today's episode, we discuss what stood out the most about Google's Q1 performance. We then talk about what kind of ad recovery we expect this year and why Google is in hot water again, as well as look at some survey data about third-party cookie doomsday. Tune in to the discussion with eMarketer senior forecasting analyst at Insider Intelligence Eric Haggstrom.

The dynamics in this space have altered slightly, though, with Google facing increasing competition. Google’s overall search ad revenues in the UK did manage to grow in 2020, by 2.0%, but its share of the total search market declined, from 72.6% in 2019 to 70.3%.

According to Tinuiti, RLSAs were responsible for a declining share of Google search ad clicks between Q3 2019 and Q3 2020. The search agency’s Q3 2020 “Google Ads Benchmark Report” noted that the decrease in cookie data could lead to further decreases in the future.

Google’s secret anti-competitive project revealed: New court documents show that Google gave itself preference in its ad exchange, confirming long-held suspicions that the tech giant was running a monopoly.

More specifically, Amazon is stealing share from Google within search, as it continues to better monetize the channel. Amazon’s search ad business will grow to $14.53 billion in 2021, boosting its share of US search ad spending to 19.0%, up from 13.3% in 2019. By the end of 2022, its share will surpass 20%.

Google will capture the bulk of mobile search dollars, but its mobile search revenues will fall from $21.61 billion to $21.15 billion in 2020. Even so, mobile’s share of Google search will increase to 66.5% in 2020, a 3.5 percentage point increase. This is primarily a result of problems the travel industry faces.

Google’s position as the search advertising leader in the US is on solid footing, according to our latest US digital ad spending estimates. This year, Google will net more than 73% of US search ad spending, down less than 1 percentage point since 2018.

The growing US search ad market is dominated by Google. But Amazon and smaller players have the ad giant in their crosshairs. According to our latest US ad spending forecast, Google’s share of search ad revenues will drop, while that of Amazon will grow over the next two years.

In a tumultuous year for advertising, every market we cover except China will experience a decline in ad spending, and Google will see its first ever contraction in digital ad revenues.