A lot of the money spent on search advertising is wasted, according to Atlas, a unit of aQuantive, which Microsoft acquired for $6 billion earlier this year. In a new study, Atlas found that branded keywords, which represent about half of a typical search marketing budget, fail to yield results because customers would ultimately have ended up on the site anyway.

"The reality is those people are already intending to go to your website," Young-Bean Song, VP of analytics for Atlas, told AdWeek. "What you're really paying for is a glorified Yellow Pages listing." 

Song concluded that far too much money is spent on search after Atlas studied 30 campaigns reaching 120,000 users across Google, Yahoo! and MSN.

While MSN trails Google and Yahoo in popularity, Song insisted that the study was objective, pointing out that Atlas had begun the survey before Microsoft acquired the aQuantive.