Google’s revenue from advertising was $37.9 billion last year. This great infographic from our friends at Word Stream illustrates the breakdown of the top 10 spending industries with their keywords and cost per click (CPC).

It’s clear to see that within a highly saturated market, bidding more for a word or phrase can generate sales but as brands attempt to continually outbid each other the arms race will surely continue. This will lead to the big brands being the only ones able to compete for phrases and keywords because the smaller brands won’t have the ad spend. If this continues, there it is likely to be a point when an ad for companies is no longer profitable because there will have been a cross over point between customer acquisition cost and ad word spend. The underlying factor is that there longer this competition goes on the longer Google will be reaping the benefits. Let us know your thoughts by commenting below…