... sophisticated smartphones and location-based services.
eMarketer estimates that US marketers will invest almost $4.4 billion in mobile advertising by 2015, up from $1 billion this year. Local retailers continue to lead the spend trend.
Believes David Karnstedt, president/ceo of EfficientFrontier, a specialist in online performance and search marketing, display and social media campaigns: "Tracking attribution across channels - desktop, mobile, TV and other connected devices - will become a key strategy. While return on investment for mobile search continues to climb, it still remains less than half of desktop search."
The findings from the study, jointly released Wednesday with equity research firm Macquarie Securities, reveal that:
- Mobile marketing investments rose to 6.5% this year, up from 2.7% in the previous year. The study combines about 3 billion monthly impressions from approximately thirty Efficient Frontier clients.
- ROI for mobile campaigns has risen five times in the past six months. When the company reported mobile search numbers in February, ROI stood at about 10% of desktop. As better devices emerge, the return continues to rise.
Comments Efficient Frontier's senior director of business analytics Siddharth Shah: "Anecdotally, I know several large national brands are seeing about 15% to 20% of the impression volume coming from mobile campaigns. But it's important to consider the investment returns on branded and non branded keywords and compare how each converts on a desktop."
The differences between mobile and desktop search metrics are becoming more clearly defined. Mobile phone search campaigns have a 66% higher click-through rate compared with desktop, and 37% higher than tablets. The cost per click [CPC] for mobile phones is 8% higher compared with desktop, with tablet CPCs accounting for 85% of their desktop counterparts.
Accordingly, marketers have been increasing investments in tablet search campaigns, with tablets accounting for 43% of Efficient Frontier's mobile search spend and 50% of click share since August. Retail clients appear to lead the way, with 77% of mobile search spend attributable to tablets.
User behavior and search-query length differ when comparing desktops to mobile phones to tablets.
Apparently, mobile devices continue to lengthen the total time that people spend online. Desktop queries are the longest, with about 2.6 words, followed by tablets and mobile phones. While screen size remains a key factor in device usage, expect to see more complex mobile queries as voice search becomes more popular and easier to use.