US B2B mobile click share growth has outpaced healthcare, retail, travel, real estate and consumer services in the last quarter, increasing by 178.4 per cent on smartphones and by 30.9 per cent on tablets quarter over quarter(QoQ), according to the State of Paid Search Report for Q4 2013 published by The Search Agency.
The report also revealed that mobile has continued to gain market share over desktop in the quarter, with one-fifth of all clicks coming from smartphones, and one-eighth coming from tablet devices. Overall impressions increased 28.3 per cent year over year (YoY), but decreased by 5.2 per cent QoQ.
Meanwhile, paid search impressions increased by 37 per cent YoY. Clicks on Bing decreased 7.4 per cent YoY and 19.7 per cent QoQ, compared with Google’s increase of 11.3 per cent YoY and 5.8 per cent QoQ.
Average cost per click (CPC) increased across all search engines in Q4, rising 27.6 per cent YoY and 5.8 per cent QoQ. Both Google and Bing also saw double-digit growth in CPCs across all devices with the largest growth occurring on smartphones, increasing by 104 per cent YoY on Bing, and 25.2 per cent on Google.
Google’s impression share reached 84.4 per cent in Q4. The search giant also saw slight increases in spend, three per cent QoQ, bringing its total share to 83.7 per cent of all spending. While Bing’s growth significantly slowed in Q4, resulting in a seven per cent loss of impressions YoY.
Delia Perez, senior vice president of marketing strategy at The Search Agency, commented on the findings: “Bing posted strong numbers early last year, but we saw a marked cooling of growth last quarter.
“As advertisers ramped up their activity around holiday shopping, Google’s Product Listing Ads got a boost, which took its toll on Bing.”
