An interesting article on TechCrunch highlights the recent decline in pay-per-click ad coverage. They cite numbers from Comscore which show that paid search click volume is growing much more slowly than overall search volume.

Comscore reasons that the difference may have something to do with the growing use of longer search queries. They suggest that advertisers may not be appearing for many queries because they are using exact matching and negative keywords to restrict the scope of their campaigns. While that explanation makes sense, TechCrunch has another idea: Many major advertisers have dropped out of the game. To prove the point, they provide a laundry list of retailers that have gone under or drastically scaled back in the last six months.

TechCrunch also cites numbers from Efficient Frontier, a marketing agency. Their numbers show that CPCs (cost per click) are down 19% year over year (and 13% quarter over quarter). While that must be disappointing for the search engines, it looks like opportunity to us.