Advertising news website, Advertising Age, has revealed the levels of search spending by some of the worlds biggest brands this week, focussing in particular on the much troubled oil behemoth, BP. The document acquired by Advertising Age doesn’t reveal spending for all advertisers on Google, however it does give an apparently accurate summary of spend by big brands, after verification from various sources with knowledge of spending levels.

The document shows that the spending on advertising with Google AdWords, often known as PPC or Pay-Per-Click advertising, increased significantly during June when the company were suffering from the negative PR and strong criticism from all quarters regarding their handling of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Previous to the disaster the company were spending a modest $57,000 a month on Google sponsored results, however a dramatic injection of budget means BP are among the top monthly spenders on Google Adwords, with an investment of $3.6 million in June alone.

The increase in spend is being seen as an reflection of how important Google’s search engine has become for reputation management. The increased spend on the BP adverts were targeted to keywords relating to the crisis, such as “oil spill” and “leak”.  The initial dramatic increase in the spend can also be attributed to the company targeting these keywords on “broad match”, meaning the BP adverts will appear on many search combinations of “oil” and “spill”.

Other large brands named in the report include Expedia, Amazon and eBay, who all spent over $5 million in June on Google Adwords. BMW, Kodak and GM spent under $500,000, whereby iPhone-maker Apple spent approximately $1m. The report also summarises the top 10 spenders on the platform, and includes the revelation that the top 10 spenders combined only account for 5% of the total revenue for Google in the US in June.

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