• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, October 12, 2015

Despite slower growth in the past two quarters, quarterly data from IgnitionOne found that the 12% year-over-year paid-search overall growth in Q4 2015 was much stronger compared with Q3 2014, which saw a 2% increase from the previous year. The report points to seasonality as a contributing factor, along with advertisers withholding investments in Yahoo's Gemini because of limiting features like reporting, trafficking, asset creation and asset optimization, compared with other engines.

These challenges stifle investments by marketers who have no desire to invest in Gemini until Yahoo works out the bugs. The report estimates desktop traffic should begin to move from the Yahoo-Bing network to Gemini between October and December 2015, per IgnitionOne.

A significant portion of traffic remains out of reach for most advertisers due to Gemini's limitations. "This may cause budgets to decrease because of traffic loss or to increased inefficiency," the report finds. IgnitionOne believes advertisers will continue to underfund Gemini, but expects to see slow adoption, particularly for brand and core terms.

IgnitionOne did not report on the individual performance of Bing and Yahoo because of the traffic shifts, but reports that Google ad spend rose 14% year-over-year among the client set measured.

Microsoft and Yahoo announced an amended partnership in April 2015, allowing Yahoo to serve desktop and mobile search traffic on Yahoo properties. Earlier his month, Steve Sirich, general manager for marketing at Bing Ads, told Search Marketing Daily that Bing still serves the majority of search advertising on Yahoo's engine. "We have seen a percentage of searches being served by Gemini, but the large percentage is still served by Bing Ads," he says, acknowledging a competing interest between Yahoo and Bing. "We respect that."

Impressions fell in the quarter -- down 19%, resulting from more ad spend shifts to mobile, where fewer ads show per query. Advertisers moved away from search partner networks and higher cost per clicks (CPC) matched by higher click-through rates (CTR), according to the report. CTR rose 10% year-over-year, while click volume rose a mere 1%.

Marketers spent 56% more for ads running cross smartphones in the quarter, compared with the prior year over year, and accounted for 64% of mobile search ad spend, compared to 36% spend share for tablets. Clicks on smartphones rose 32%; and CTR, 67% year over year. Tablet clicks fell 13%; CTR rose 20%.