There doesn’t seem to be any slowdown in mobile search ad spending, which has doubled on a year-over-year basis for several quarters now, according to IgnitionOne. The latest quarterly report from IgnitionOne finds tablet search spending to have increased by 116% year-over-year in Q2, and smartphone search spending to have grown by 106%. That compares to an overall search spend increase of 7%, indicating that mobile devices are becoming increasing favored in paid search.
Clicks and impressions on smartphones and tablets also saw strong growth during Q2. Compared to a year earlier, impressions were up 104% for tablets and 82% for smartphones, while clicks were up 91% for tablets and 135% for smartphones.
Costs per click moved in opposite directions on the devices, down 13% for smartphones, but up 13% for tablets.
During the quarter, tablets accounted for 59% of mobile search ad spending, down from 64% in Q1.
Other Findings:
- Impressions and clicks each rose by 5% year-over-year in Q2 for paid search as a whole.
- Google had a strong quarter, picking up 79.2% of spending, and beating back earlier gains from Yahoo!/Bing.
- The retail sector had a healthy quarter, with paid search spending increasing by 18% year-over-year, and impressions up 24%.
- Retailer investment in programmatic display grew by 130%, while travel brands upped their spending by 130%. Travel enjoyed big jumps in impressions (80%) and clicks (79%), with retailers also seeing increases (76% and 25%, respectively).
- Initial results suggest that Google Enhanced Campaigns (GEC) are leading to higher cost and CPCs, resulting in lower clicks and click-through-rate, as “pre-GEC advertisers are forced to share the traffic with newcomers.” The trend towards higher CPCs was also recently noted by Adobe and iProspect.
About the Data: This data is based on a series of reports from IgnitionOne, which have tracked more than 100 billion impressions and more than 3 billion clicks on Google and Yahoo!/Bing search networks, Google AdEx, and other display networks from January 1, 2006 through June 16, 2013.
