Paid Search Growth Slows to a Crawl

Adobe just released its Q4 2015 Digital Advertising Report looking at data for Q4 2014 to Q4 2015 from over 400 billion digital ad impressions from Google, Facebook, Bing/Yahoo, Baidu, and Yandex and over 4,000 branded sites across industries.

They looked at paid search trends, mobile spend patterns, Google vs. Facebook ad performance, and how digital advertising over the holidays drove online retailer revenues.

According to the report, paid search growth momentum is slowing, more money is being spent on mobile, and advertisers saw increased CTRs across Google display ads and Facebook News Feed ads.

It found that paid search growth slowed to 3% compared to a 12% increase seen in Q4 2014. In Europe, it was 5% compared to 17% in 2014.

“Mobile search spend increased by 23% YoY and helped further close the mobile gap,” a spokesperson for Adobe said in an email. “Mobile clicks increased by 35% YoY with smartphones contributing to most of the mobile growth. Google and Bing product listing ads (visual ad formats for online retailers) saw a healthy increase in spending (37% YoY) triggered by online holiday shopping.”

“Heading into the holiday season, Google display CTRs grew much faster from Q3 than Facebook News Feed CTRs – 219% vs. 77%, respectively, but a YoY comparison shows that Facebook’s CTRs are still outperforming Google (up 35% vs. 27% YoY, respectively),” they said. “Over the holidays, nearly $1 out of every $3 in retail revenue came from search and display advertising: Search and display combined generated 32% of all online U.S. retail revenue in Q4. Paid search drove 10% more revenue for retailers than direct traffic during Thanksgiving weekend.”

You can find more insights and analysis about Adobe’s findings in a post here.

Images via Thinkstock, Adobe