Google has run studies in the past showing that somewhere in the range of 85-89% of search ad clicks are incremental – meaning that visits to the advertiser’s site from the ad clicks are not replaced by organic clicks when the search ads are paused. Now Google’s back with a similar study, this time looking at mobile search ad clicks. This latest research comes up with remarkably similar results. Namely, 88% of site visitors arriving via mobile search ads would not click on the advertiser’s organic result should ads be paused.
One wonders if the latest research has been released in conjunction with the migration to Enhanced Campaigns, with Google feeling the need to reassure advertisers that the same dynamics apply to mobiles as desktops. (And Google does reference enhanced campaigns in its study release.)
The study was conducted from March 2012 to April 2013 across more than 300 US AdWords accounts from 12 verticals, narrowing in on search terms that had an organic listing on the first page, and adjusting for factors such as seasonality. (Such factors – including organic search ranking – can affect how incremental clicks are, according to the previous studies.)
The results indicate that at least 80% of mobile search ad clicks were incremental across each of the verticals tracked. The figures were highest for the classified and local (97%), business and industrial (94%) and education and government (94%) verticals, and lowest for service in all verticals (82%).
