Survey: Smartphones drive cross-device orders
Charlottesville, Va. - Smartphones generated 19% of paid search clicks and 9% of search spend in second quarter 2014, while tablets produced 18% of clicks and 19% of spend. According to the Q2 Digital Marketing Report from RKG, which surveyed retailers in its client base, cross-device tracking surfaces 7% more orders overall, but 14% more smartphone orders.
While smartphones produce 12% of traditionally tracked conversions, they contribute nearly 25% of cross-device orders.
In terms of comparison shopping engines (CSE), share of total CSE spend going to Amazon dropped from 17% in second quarter 2013 to 9% in second quarter 2014 as large advertisers were moved out of Amazon Product Ads by Amazon, which RKG says was ostensibly to encourage them towards the Amazon Marketplace. Among advertisers running both Amazon Product Ads and Google paid listing ads (PLAs), revenue volume from Amazon’s program was just 7% that of PLAs, down from 9% in first quarter 2014.
Google saw a 24% increase in ad spend from second quarter 2013, as PLAs continue to produce huge growth, while Bing Ads search spending grew 19% from the prior year across Bing, Yahoo, and search partners. Mobile traffic continues to produce strong growth, while desktop traffic continues to decline. Smartphone clicks grew by 47% year-over-year, compared to a 43% increase for tablets and a 2% decline for desktop.
Image-based product ads continue to see much higher growth than traditional text ads. Search advertiser spending on product ads in the second quarter rose 72% over last year, while text ad spending grew just 6%. PLA share of total Google clicks remained steady from last quarter, at 26% of overall paid search clicks and 50% of non-brand clicks.
With Google’s upcoming transition to a new PLA campaign structure next month, RKG data found that conversion rates continue to be higher for PLAs, resulting in a 13% higher ROI than text ads, and suggesting continued growth opportunities for this ad format.