Paid Mobile Search Spend Doubled This Year

A new survey and report published recently by SEMPO indicates companies are spending more on paid mobile search than ever before, actually doubling from this time last year.

Localized paid search is becoming the most popular, with the study finding that 22 percent of  respondents’ budgets were spent locally on targeted paid search.  In the US the same question was asked to companies and it found that a greater proportion of company’s’ pay per click marketing budgets were being allocated to local search, with actual figures being 37 percent for agency respondents and 23 percent for clients.

Some other key findings from the study include the following:

• The rise of the mobile internet is the trend which is regarded as having the most impact on search marketing, with more than three-quarters of companies (79%) deeming it as ‘highly significant’ or ‘significant’.
• The use of social networks for marketing continues to grow. The percentage of company respondents who say they use Facebook for marketing now stands at 84%, up from 73% last year.
• More companies are outsourcing search and social media. Only 44% of companies are now carrying out search engine optimization in-house, compared to 51% last year. Only 55% are doing social media marketing in-house, compared to 62% a year ago.
• Companies and agencies are increasingly using third party bid management technology for paid search marketing. Just under half of responding companies conducting search engine marketing rely on basic tools.
• Google’s dominance as a search engine is clear from both advertiser and agency results, with the vast majority of companies (95%) paying to advertise on Google AdWords.