Search advertising spending on tablets increased by 113% year-over-year in Q1 2013, representing 64% of mobile search spend, per results from a new IgnitionOne study. Smartphones also saw strong spending growth (+112%), with both devices cannibalizing PC budgets, as overall paid search spending increased by only 2%. For the quarter, tablet users spent an average of 17% more time on site than PC users. They also sported an Engagement Score that was 9% higher than for PC users. (Engagement Score is a proprietary IgnitionOne metric that measures behavior and propensity to convert on a relative scale.)
Smartphone users accounted for a larger audience than tablet users, but showed lower overall engagement than tablet users relative to PCs. Smartphone users spent 4% more time on site than PC users, but had an Engagement Score that was 14% lower.
The study notes that it is more difficult to track smartphone than PC or tablet users: 59% of smartphone users do not allow themselves to be tracked, compared to 9% of tablet user and 18% of PC users.
Looking at other mobile paid search trends, the report reveals that tablets saw click growth of 79% year-over-year and impression growth of 129%. Smartphones saw relatively smaller increases of 25% and 27%, respectively.
Other Findings:
- Yahoo! Bing experienced an 11% rise in spending, compared to a 1% decline for Google. The former’s market share inched up to 24.4%.
- Spending on programmatic display grew by 55% in Q1, and impressions rose by 49%. The average clearing price for these ads climbed by 4% to $1.51, leading the researchers to question the perception that programmatic media is “low cost and low quality.”
- IgnitionOne notes “minimal cannibalization” when paid search and Google product listing ads are running on the same page.
About the Data: This data is based on a series of reports from IgnitionOne, which have tracked more than 97 billion impressions and more than 2 .7 billion clicks on Google and Yahoo!/Bing search networks, Google AdEx, and other display networks from January 1, 2006 through March 14, 2013 .
