• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, December 4, 2015

Give me a new experience. Show me innovation rather than a stale piece of bread that crumbles in my hand when held too tight. The $82 billion eMarketer estimates brands will spend on search advertising in 2015 continues to rise, but for some reason analytics companies cannot come up with real time data on advertising spend.

eMarketer estimates search investments will reach $94 billion in 2016, but analytics companies cannot seem to churn out the numbers fast enough to keep up with consumer demand for buying online. How much did advertisers spend and what did they get for their return on investments?

I typically don't use SearchBlog to muse about what's not working in search engine advertising, but I'm stuck on the fact brands had to pause campaigns during the long U.S. holiday weekend either because their Web site went down, they ran out of stock, or warehouses couldn't ship products fast enough. Then Friday morning I learn even the best of the best analytics companies lag when it comes to turning around data for search spend. 

Analytics related to search needs to catch up with demand for the media. I won't name the company(ies), but I do want to call attention to the lag in available advertising spend data -- reports run 10 to 14 days after the end of the month. These companies had an entire year -- 2015 -- to catch up. 

The growth in online purchases and decline of in-store sales during the holiday weekend suggests the practices behind search engine advertising works well, but the analytics supporting the media needs an overhaul. 

Last year, 2014, marketers at search engines and brands pushed consumers to make purchases via mobile phones. This year it materialized.

Adobe estimates that on Thanksgiving and Black Friday consumers spent about $4.45 billion online; and Cyber Monday, more than $3 billion. Smartphones generated 26% share of sales, up from 16% compared with 2014, per Adobe. Mobile also drove more than 50% of traffic to Web sites, per ChannelAdvisor.

In fact for the first time ever, more than 60% of traffic driven by search and comparison shopping engines across the ChannelAdvisor platform came from mobile devices -- smartphone and tablets -- during the long U.S. holiday weekend. 

ChannelAdvisor also notes online retailers grew sales by 24.1% year over year on Amazon, 24.3% year over year on Google Shopping, and 2.6% year over year on eBay.