Mobile PPC Search Sees Significant Growth

Marin Software’s latest UK Online Advertising surveys reports that mobile paid search volumes leapt 49% in the last quarter of 2011, with 12% of all UK paid search clicks in December attributed to smartphone and tablet devices.

Interestingly the report also suggests that the number of consumers searching via mobile devices is growing faster than the amount being spent in this channel. According to Marin, paid search click-through rates rose 24% across all devices during the last three months in 2011, while click costs dropped 5% year on year. The report suggests that desktop search volumes are growing faster than budgets, and as a consequence less budget is being allocated to mobile search, with mobile click share at 12% but mobile spend share only 7.5%. This in turn seems be resulting in less expensive clicks on mobile PPC search campaigns.

Industry experts believe that mobile search ad spend is lagging behind behind consumers’ adoption of new mobile devices and that in the main, advertisers have been slow to react to the growth in consumer demand. However, what isn’t completely clear at this stage is how user behaviour is evolving across a proliferation of different devices. For example, are iPad searches in front of the TV replacing laptop searches? And is the growth in smartphones driving incremental searches and changing the length and shape of the conversion funnel?

As we enter 2012 there are some certainties; mobile searches and searchers need to be considered within your search strategy; and ensuring your site is properly optimised for all devices is paramount.

Check out NMA’s story here.

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