Mobile and Tablets Driving US Paid Search Spend

Bing takes more of Google’s overall market share, including tablets for sale

After four consecutive quarters of a relatively consistent market share split between Google and Bing, Bing’s share of advertiser spend grew to 21 percent, up 3.6 percent YoY and 3 percent QoQ. Bing saw strong growth on tablets, increasing its share of spend from 10.6 to 15.3 percent YoY.

Smartphones and tablets remain strong

Consumers increased click volume on smartphones by 86 percent YoY. And swds3FSD 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 135 percent YoY.

Retail still strong – even after the holiday season

The retail industry saw tremendous growth on mobile and tablets YoY. Smartphone click share for retail increased 78.2 percent YoY and 69.9 percent QoQ. Tablet click share increased 71.8 percent YoY and 13.5 percent QoQ. In particular, android 4.0 tablet share grew consistently over the past five quarters and click traffic from smartphones and tablets for the retail and e-commerce sector was larger than any other vertical in the study – which looks at consumer and business services, media and entertainment, real estate and construction, travel and leisure – with 39.6 percent of clicks.

Product Listing Ads (PLA) gaining ground on smartphones and tablets

Clicks on PLA increased enormously YoY and PLA clicks coming from smartphones and tablets increased 100 percent and 59.7 percent QoQ, respectively. Tablets came in at 9.9 percent of PLA clicks last quarter. For the first time, likely due to improvements to format and visibility on newer models, smartphones made up more than 2 percent of PLA clicks.

To uncover key trends for the Q1 2013 State of Paid Search Report, The Search Agency extracted client data from search engine advertising tools. The 7 inch tablet research sample included advertisers who had 15 consecutive months of data with The Search Agency, and had an established and stable business model from Q1 2012 to Q1 2013. All results are based on U.S. campaigns only.