Both paid social and search are growing due to increased use of smartphones and publishers who know how to tailor their advertising to mobile users.
Kenshoo's new infographic highlights mobile as a key driver for paid social and search advertising. "Mobile year-over-year spending increased 159% for paid social ads and 66% for paid search; mobile accounted for 68% of paid social ad clicks and 50% of paid search ad clicks," according to Kenshoo's press release.
Increased mobile traffic drove overall cost per click up for social ads as clicks became more important to optimization. For search, the opposite was true, as lower smartphone cost per click drove overall cost per click down slightly.
"The third quarter continued the mobile growth trend from the first half of 2015," said Chris Costello, director of marketing research for Kenshoo. "Consumers rely on mobile devices more than ever, and advanced marketers are following suit with increasingly optimized campaigns which delivered positive results in both paid social and search. As publishers expand and refine their mobile offerings, marketers should expect to continue improving performance heading into the holiday season."
The below infographic shows the influence of mobile in the Americas, where search clicks on mobile devices (51%) make up the majority of total clicks for the first time this last quarter.
"Digital spend used to be predominantly paid search ads on desktop computers, but today our budgets cross multiple devices and ad formats across a variety of publishers and platforms," said Chris Humber, head of practice, search at GroupM.
Where did the data come from? "Search and social results are based on five quarters of performance data from over 3,000 Kenshoo advertiser and agency accounts across 20 vertical industries and over 70 countries, spanning the Google, Bing, Baidu, Yahoo!, Yahoo! Japan and Facebook ad networks," according to a Kenshoo press release. "The resulting sample includes more than 550 billion impressions, 11 billion clicks and $6 billion USD in advertiser spend."
Key takeaways:
Social impressions decreased 36% compared to last year.
Social clicks decreased increased 75% compared to last year.
Social click-through rate increased 174% compared to last year.
Paid search impressions increased 3% compared to last year.
Paid search clicks increased 16% compared to last year.
Paid search click-through rate increased 12% compared to last year.