The Latest Performics 50 Search Index Shows Evolution of Consumer Shopping Behavior

March 21, 2007

CHICAGO, In November 2006, most marketers within the Performics 50 index saw consumers turning to search engines earlier in the purchase process than in years past, searching in greater numbers earlier in the holiday season. Performics®, the performance-based marketing division of DoubleClick®, attributed this change in part to an increased reliance on search results.

“The data demonstrate that consumers turned to search earlier in the purchase funnel than they had in years past,” said Cam Balzer, vice president of strategic planning at Performics. “This indicates a significant shift in shopping behavior, but we did not see a significant shift in actual buying behavior. While advertisers were able to engage consumers with search earlier in the process, we expect to focus much of our 2007 holiday efforts on converting these searchers more efficiently.”

Other notable findings from the latest Performics 50 Search Index include:

• Total sales from search engine marketing programs grew as search spend increased

• Total Q4 revenue attributed directly to search increased by 43 percent over Q4 2005

• Overall search-attributed sales for all of 2006 increased by 55 percent from the previous year

• Significant growth in search spend resulted, in part, from the addition of new advertisers to the Performics 50 Index; some of these advertisers were new to paid search in 2006

For a copy of the latest Performics 50 Search Trend Report, visit www.performics.com.

Methodology

The Performics 50 represents 50 actual paid search campaigns managed by Performics’ SEM experts using our proprietary DART Search® platform. It was established in April 2004 as a means of providing industry benchmarks among search engine marketing campaigns, based on the average number of clicks for the first three months of 2004. Each month after that, new campaigns were added only when campaigns previously in the index deviate significantly in traffic, again based on the average for the three months prior to that month.

Performics manages approximately 280 active campaigns across a wide range of industry categories. The Performics 50, while composed exclusively of Performics campaigns, is intended to reflect the larger universe of marketers engaged in paid search engine advertising.