Leaked Google documents show ad word spending

The Gulf of Mexico oil spill prompted BP to spend heavily on keyword advertising

A set of leaked documents has revealed some fascinating details about the organisations buying advertising around Google's search results.

The files were leaked to Advertising Age and show that AT&T was the biggest spending customer of search advertising in June, which was not particularly surprising considering the amount of buzz around Apple's iPhone 4.

Perhaps more surprising was the extent to which oil company BP ramped up its search keyword spending during the catastrophic spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

BP had been spending a modest $57,000 (£37,000) per month on advertising around certain Google search keywords. However, this shot up to nearly $3.3m (£2.1m) in June as the company sought to make sure it was reaching people searching for details of the spill.

"We can't comment on these figures because we haven't seen the document in question or determined what these numbers represent," Dennis Woodside, vice president of Google Americas Operations, told Advertising Age.

"We're now looking into the possibility that someone improperly disclosed confidential information about our clients, and [we] will take all appropriate action."

The documents show that BP bought advertising around the terms 'oil spill', 'leak', 'top kill' and 'live feed'.

BP spends an estimated $100m (£64m) annually on advertising, and the Google payments are a drop in the ocean, but this is the first time that BP has invested significantly in online advertising around a specific issue.

"Google has become the remote control for the world; it's the first stop, not TV," said Will Margiloff, chief executive of Innovation Interactive, a unit of Denstu. "People are seeking BP's answers out as opposed to waiting to be told."