Top Luxury Brands Spent $22 Million On Google Text Ads In The U.S. Last Year [Study]

Paid search research firm, AdGooroo, has analyzed the paid search activity by luxury brands and retailers in the U.S. across five categories: apparel, beauty & cosmetics, shoes, handbags and watches. According to the study, five of the top personal luxury companies spent nearly $22 million on Google AdWords desktop/tablet text ads across their brands in 2013.  Apparel topped the list in overall spend by both brands and retailers.

The top ten retailers in the luxury space outspent the top luxury brands in four out of five of the categories studied.  Based on impressions, retailers commanded the share of voice across all five categories. Retailers spent nearly five times as much on luxury shoe keywords and nearly two times as much on luxury beauty and cosmetics terms as the brands did on the same keywords. Handbags was the only category in which the brands outspent retailers.

Macy’s, Saks Fifth Avenue, Nordstrom, Barney’s and Neiman Marcus are among the top spending retailers in the luxury category. There were also sale aggregators such as DesignerApparel.com and secondhand marketplaces such as BagBorrowOrSteal.com. [Note the descriptions of these sites have been updated to better describe their business models and changed from the term “unauthorized” used in the AdGooroo report.] The luxury watch category saw the most activity by unauthorized dealers and alternative retailers advertising in paid search.

Amazon is a huge player in the luxury brand space on paid search in the U.S. The site appeared among the top 10 retail spenders in every category and was the top retailer spender in the beauty & cosmetics category and second only to Chanel. Amazon-owned Zappos made the list of top spending retailers in the luxury shoes and luxury handbags categories.

Below are the top retailers and brands ranked by Google AdWords spend (U.S. desktop/tablet text ads only):

For more details including a breakdown of spend leaders within each category, download the report here.

About The Author

Ginny Marvin

As Third Door Media's paid media reporter, Ginny Marvin writes about paid online marketing topics including paid search, paid social, display and retargeting for Search Engine Land and Marketing Land. With more than 15 years of marketing experience, Ginny has held both in-house and agency management positions. She provides search marketing and demand generation advice for ecommerce companies and can be found on Twitter as @ginnymarvin.