Covario released its Global Search Spend Analysis for the first quarter of 2009.

Highlights from the report include:

- Growth in paid search spending for Covario customers contracted slightly, -1.4% in Q1’09 (compared to Q4’08). This is down from the same period last year when paid search advertising spending grew 2.4% from Q4’07 to Q1’08.

- The reduction in spend was localized to EMEA, where spending contracted by 15.9% from Q4’08. Spending in the Americas was up slightly, 0.8%, and in APAC spending was up 7.4%.

- Google has been most impacted by the cutback in EMEA due to their 95%+ market share in the region. For the first time, we saw a 6% decline in the growth rate on Google spending — again, largely due to the cutbacks in EMEA. Yahoo and MSN both posted big gains in spending and in share.

- CPCs rates continue to fall, as spending on paid search programs remains in flux.

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