Marin releases Q4 mobile data

A 49% increase in UK mobile paid click share has been recorded in the final quarter of last year over the previous three months.

A 49% increase in UK mobile paid click share has been recorded in the final quarter of last year compared to the previous three months.

This came as new data showed that 12% of all UK paid search clicks over a three month period were made either on a tablet or smartphone.

But online advertising company Marin Software said advertisers were ignoring the move towards consumers conducting searches by mobile devices.

Its quarterly online advertising report found that 92.5% of paid search spend was still being allocated to desktop search, with only 7.5% on mobiles.

The disparity between mobile click share (12%) and mobile spend share (7.5%) highlights favourable performance conditions for mobile advertisers, according to the report.

“Relative to desktop search, volumes are growing faster than budgets, resulting in less expensive clicks on mobile campaigns,” it found.

Across all devices, paid search click volumes increased 43%, click-through rates (CTR) increased 24% and cost per click (CPC) dropped by 5% year on year.

“The combination of improving CTRs and declining CPCs, point to significant efficiency gains for advertisers over the past year,” Marin said.

EMEA managing director Ed Stevenson said: “In December 2011, we saw search marketers allocate a larger portion of budgets to mobile devices than ever before.

“However, the budgets for mobile search advertising still lag user adoption of devices.

“Given this gap, we expect mobile search to see continued investment as advertising dollars chase consumer behaviour in 2012.”

Check out the rest of our TTE 2012 coverage.