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    Report Shows Mobile Devices Drive Quarterly Growth; Bing Continues to Gain Market Share

    The Search Agency, a global online marketing firm and the largest independent U.S. search marketing agency, recently 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!. In addition, 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 percent while clicks grew 16.2 percent and advertiser spend increased 23.1 percent year-over-year. The quarterly report analyzed 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.”

    Additional findings from The Search Agency’s State of Paid Search Report are highlighted in this slideshow.

    Report Shows Mobile Devices Drive Quarterly Growth; Bing Continues to Gain Market Share - slide 1

    Click through for results from a U.S. search marking survey, conducted by The Search Agency.

    Report Shows Mobile Devices Drive Quarterly Growth; Bing Continues to Gain Market Share - slide 2

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

    Report Shows Mobile Devices Drive Quarterly Growth; Bing Continues to Gain Market Share - slide 3

    Average cost per click (CPC) increased on both Bing and Google in Q3, rising 19.6 and 3.5 percent respectively, but Google’s CPC has fallen by 1.3 percent QoQ while Bing was up .9 percent. 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 percent YoY. Google also saw CPC growth on all three device types, with the largest growth in tablets at 14.2 percent.

    Report Shows Mobile Devices Drive Quarterly Growth; Bing Continues to Gain Market Share - slide 4

    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 percent of clicks coming from smartphones and tablets.

    Report Shows Mobile Devices Drive Quarterly Growth; Bing Continues to Gain Market Share - slide 5

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

    Report Shows Mobile Devices Drive Quarterly Growth; Bing Continues to Gain Market Share - slide 6

    The retail industry continues to see value in product listing ads (PLAs), with spend on this ad format up 27.9 percent YoY and 7.8 percent QoQ. Smartphones and tablets account for over 31 percent of total PLA clicks, compared to only 5.4 percent in Q3 2012.

    Report Shows Mobile Devices Drive Quarterly Growth; Bing Continues to Gain Market Share - slide 7

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

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