• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, December 15, 2015

When asked about the frequency of searches on Amazon, more than half the MediaPost Search Insider Summit (held Dec. 9-12, 2015) attendees raised their hand to signify they search on the marketplace more than twice weekly. So it comes as no surprise to me that 62% of U.S. consumers participating in a study released Tuesday say they researched Christmas gifts on Amazon first, followed by 44% on Google.

The Searchmetrics study polling 2,000 U.S. adults on how they will research seasonal gifts online this year identifies the major role played by mobile phones, with 67% of people planning to use their smartphones for researching gifts and 20% saying their phone will become the only device they use for the task.

Some 23% will look on ebay, and 14% will turn to Bing to look for holiday gift ideas.

The data pinpoints social networks as an important destination for holiday gift research, with 27% of those participating in the survey saying they will look on Facebook and Pinterest for ideas this season.

Pinterest revealed in November that it had accumulated 17.7 million holiday gift pins on its site. About 16% of the consumers participating in the survey also say they will use Instagram to inspire gift ideas, and 12% mentioned Twitter.

When asked the devices U.S. consumers would use to research holiday gifts, 24% say they will mostly use computers, 15% mostly smartphones, and 9% tablets.

Searchmetrics ran an online survey of 2000 U.S. adults using Toluna Quicksurveys on Nov. 24, 2015.

Amazon also led in text ad clicks for keyword groups running on Google for top toy brands with 12.5% click share from Nov. 15, through Dec. 13, 2015, according to AdGooroo, a Kantar Media Group company. Target follows with 8.7%, Walmart at 8.3%, Toys "R" Us at 6.2%, and Lego.com at 4.2%.

AdGooroo published research on Tuesday examining paid-search activity on the top toy brands this holiday season, finding that collectively, 7,060 advertisers spent $6 million sponsoring 893 AdGooroo-analyzed keywords via U.S. Google desktop text ads.

The most-clicked keyword was "xbox one," which received more than 653,000 clicks during the last month. LEGO’s four keywords in the top 20 collectively generated nearly 584,000 clicks.

A total of 996 advertisers spent $1.7 million on U.S. Google’s Product Listing Ads, but just ten advertisers accounted for 70% of clicks, according to AdGooroo.