Travel and Mobile are Q2 Bright Spots as Search Spending Growth Slows

Following two very strong quarters of increasing growth in US search advertising spending, the second quarter of 2012 showed a deceleration of spending growth. Q2 2012 had a year-over-year (YoY) growth in search spend of 15.5% in the US. Higher growth was seen in the travel vertical with a 37.8% YoY increase in search ad spending in Q2.

Mobile search advertising also continued strong growth YoY, with spending on mobile search ads up an astounding 333% YoY.

These figures are released quarterly by IgnitionOne, a leading digital marketing solutions firm, managing more than $1 billion in online advertising.

Key findings in the report:

• US Search growth slows in Q2 – Search spend in Q2 was up 15.5% when compared to Q2 2011. At nearly half the growth rate of last quarter, this represents a slowdown in growth of paid search spending. This slowdown in growth of spend can be presumably blamed on the current weakness of the macro-economy and softness of the retail vertical in the quarter.
• Yahoo!/Bing continues to outpace Google spend growth in US – While Yahoo!/Bing impressions and clicks did not grow faster than Google, its CPCs and search spend certainly did. While Google only grew 11.4% in spend, YoY, in Q2, Yahoo!/Bing grew 32.9%. As this growth is off a smaller base, it did not translate into an increase in market share for Yahoo!/Bing, however.
• US Travel vertical breaks from pack and has strong growth – Continuing last quarter’s trend there was impressive growth in activity and spend in Q2 compared to the same time period last year. Travel impressions were up 61.9% and search spend among travel marketers increased 37.8% YoY.
• Continued increase in mobile search advertising – US mobile grew to 14% from 12% of total search budgets with a huge 333% increase in spend YoY. The mobile search ads also had greater growth in engagement as click grew 325% while impressions grew 130%.

“While search spending did not continue at the pace of recent quarters, the increase compared to last year is still strong,” said Roger Barnette, President of IgnitionOne. “The huge and continued growth in mobile search spending continues to impress and points to the movement of consumers and advertisers to these devices.”

This report is the latest in a series of reports from IgnitionOne reviewing trends across the online advertising landscape. This and previous quarterly reports can be downloaded at http://bit.ly/ignitiononeresearch

About IgnitionOne

IgnitionOne®, the global leader in digital marketing solutions, enables companies to integrate and centralize cross-channel marketing efforts within one platform, allowing for deeper insights and greater digital success. On behalf of our customers, IgnitionOne currently scores over 300 million users in 53 countries to help optimize media and website conversions using cross-channel attribution modeling across search, mobile, display and social. IgnitionOne’s solutions are powered by proprietary, integrated technology: IgnitionOne’s Digital Marketing Suite^SM.

IgnitionOne powers more than $30 billion in revenue each year for leading brands, including General Motors, Chico’s, Ann Taylor, La Quinta, Travel Guard and Fiat, as well as advertising agencies such as MRM Worldwide and CyberAgent.

For more information, please visit http://www.ignitionone.com or follow the company on Twitter @ignitionone.