As the growth of smartphones and tablets continue to wow even the digital world, mobile technology has become an increasingly important part of digital marketing. And that's compounded by report I read today. 

The Search Agency released its quarterly 'State of Paid Search' Report, which found that Q3 saw strong growth in impressions, clicks and advertiser spend across Google, Bing and Yahoo!. But perhaps more importantly, mobile continues to gain market share over desktop, with one-third of Google’s clicks coming from mobile and tablet devices.

Impressions increased 37.1% while clicks grew 16.2% and advertiser spend increased 23.1% year-over-year. The quarterly report analysed aggregated client data from various industries to identify paid search marketing trends across search engines and devices on a year-over-year (YoY—Q2 2012 to Q3 2013) and quarter-over-quarter (QoQ—Q2 2013 to Q3 2013) basis.

“In Q3, we continue to observe consumers migrating toward smartphone and tablet devices,” said Keith Wilson, vice president of agency products at The Search Agency. “With Enhanced Campaigns rolled out and Google's cross-device estimated conversions announcement, marketers must adapt to these new tool sets to understand how to connect with today and tomorrow's consumer.”

Here are some other talking points from the report:

Paid search spend increased 23 percent YoY
The quarter saw a strong growth in overall search activity, with impressions, clicks and advertising spend all increasing. Clicks on Bing grew 20.9% compared with Google’s growth at 15.3% YoY.

CPCs are on the rise
Average Cost Per Click (CPC) increased on both Bing and Google in Q3, rising 19.6 and 3.5% respectively, but Google’s CPC has fallen by 1.3% QoQ while Bing was up 0.9%. Bing also saw double-digit growth in CPCs across all three device types, with the largest growth occurring on smartphones, which increased by 25.2% YoY. Google also saw CPC growth on all three device types, with the largest growth in tablets at 14.2%.

On mobile devices, Google is King
Google’s distribution of clicks continues to shift from desktops to smartphones and tablets, with mobile devices making up more than one-third of their clicks in Q3. Bing’s click distribution remained largely unchanged with less than 18% of clicks coming from smartphones and tablets.

Smartphones and tablets remain strong
Consumers increased click volume on smartphones increased by over 50%, while volume on tablets increased by 63.4% YoY. And despite a 10.4% drop in smartphone CPC, total advertiser spend on smartphones was up 68% YoY. Total spend on tablets went up 87.6 percent YoY.

Retailers continue to invest in Product Listing Ads (PLA)
The retail industry continues to see value in PLAs, with spend on this ad format up 27.9% YoY and 7.8% QoQ. Smartphones and tablets account for over 31% of total PLA clicks, compared to only 5.4% in Q3 2012.

Real estate and construction go mobile
In the real estate and construction sector, mobile is driving click growth, as 29% of all clicks come from mobile devices compared to only 15% in the prior year. Advertisers had strong click growth in the industry, up 24% YoY and 12.7% QoQ.

To download the report, click here.

 

By Jonathan Davies, Editor of the Digital Marketing Magazine. 

Connect with on Google+

PrivSec Conferences will bring together leading speakers and experts from privacy and security to deliver compelling content via solo presentations, panel discussions, debates, roundtables and workshops.
For more information on upcoming events, visit the website.

comments powered by Disqus