Covario Sees Search Budgets, Impressions, Clicks Grow Double Digits YoY In Q2

A wave of devices with smart search features and voice-assisted services continue to move more dollars into mobile search engines, apps and Web sites. Covario's high-tech consumer electronics and retail clients spent nearly twice as much on mobile search ads in Q2 2014, as they did in the year-ago quarter. Overall, mobile advertising grew 98% in the quarter, compared with a year ago, and 6% sequentially.

Among Covario's clients, mobile search advertising contributed 25% to total global search investments. The gap between ad spend on mobile devices narrowed compared with the prior quarter, with 38% of Q2 budgets going toward smartphones and 62% to tablets. Media spend by device gave 75% to desktop, 15% to tablets and 10% to smartphones.

Impressions, clicks and budgets experience double-digit growth year-on-year in the second quarter of 2014, per Covario. The cost per click, click-through rates flattened. Overall, CPC prices rose 0.7% year-on-year and fell 6% sequentially. CPCs remain largely discounted to desktop clicks with mobile CTRs down 43% in Q2.

Overall, paid search CPCs rose 2% YoY on 18% more clicks with a CTR of 40%. Sequentially, the company saw for its clients 12%, minus 9%, minus 14%, respectively, among Covario clients.

Worldwide, Google garnered 73% of impressions, 60% of clicks and 86% of budget. Baidu followed with 17%, 34%, and 7%, respectively, per Covario. Microsoft Bing came in No. 3 with 3% of impressions, 4% of clicks, and 4% of budget. Naver took 1% of impressions, 1% of clicks and 1% of cost. Yandex took 5% of impressions, 2% of clicks and took 2% of budget in the quarter.

eMarketer estimates Google will maintain control of more than half of mobile advertising dollars globally based on the movement of more ad dollars to search, despite losing a small amount of share this year, compared with the prior year. About 50.2% of the net mobile Internet ad revenue share worldwide in 2014 will belong to Google. Facebook will take 22.3%, and Twitter 2.8%.

"Magnifying Glass" photo from Shutterstock.

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