There’s just nothing like search, as its ad spend continues to achieve worldwide growth.
Double-Digit Growth
Advertisers continued to pump more money into their search campaigns last year, as global ad spend grew by over 10%. These insights, which were revealed by Intelligence firm Adthena, sampled data from more than 140 million paid ads and five million search terms across the US, UK and Australia.
The findings also revealed that for the first time ever, desktop search spend (46%) was surpassed by mobile (54%), which played a major factor in driving higher click-through-rates and heightening brand appeal.
The Mobile Dependency
With Google currently controlling 93% of the mobile search market, the prominence that mobile search ads have when users conduct a search, and people simply spending more time searching on their smartphones, marketing spend continues to shift more towards the mobile customer.
Even though Google has made changes in recent years to make their search ads appear more distinguishable from organic placements, the Adthena report states that there is still difficulty differentiating the two, especially on mobile devices. Not only that, but ad-blocking software is much less prevalent on mobile, making its real estate more lucrative to marketers.
Another key contributor to mobile’s growth was the increased adoption of Google’s expanded text ad program, which launched back in 2016. Expanded text ads give advertisers even more space to market their product or offering.
Leading Verticals
While many industries increased their spend and continued to get more value from their mobile search campaigns, there were a few key verticals that stood out. At the forefront were both the auto and finance industries, which collectively spent nearly 5% more than the overall average.
Consumer electronics and travel and tourism also invested over a third of their search budget to mobile. Travel and tourism in particular seems to be an area of opportunity right now, as it had the highest performing click-through-rates in the United States.
Searching for Gold
As we continue to see more digital channels emerge, current channels evolve and more options made available for advertisers, it’s clear that search is still incredibly relevant and worthy of the investment. Publishers who are neck-deep in running campaigns for the above verticals, or any vertical for that matter, would be wise to keep a steady flow of spend allocated towards search.
If you’re still favoring desktop search over mobile, it might be time to tilt the scale as we move deeper into the second half of 2018.
If you have any questions about the mobile offers we’re running, or if you’d like to get a rundown of the highest converters, reach out to your account manager today and they’ll be happy to help you further capitalize!