Paid Search Trends 2017 Q2

Keeping up with best practices and innovations in paid search is challenging enough without the addition of consistently rising costs; but for the second quarter in a row, advertisers are having to deal with simultaneously with the complexity of the ever-evolving paid search landscape and the burden of unprecedented CPC expenses.

iProspect’s Quarterly Paid Search Trends Report identifies and analyzes key trends and developments in search to help you maximize your return from this important marketing channel. Insights from the Q2 2017 report include:

• CPC continues to rise – reaches all-time high. While paid search continues to be an outstanding performance media channel,  continued CPC increases drove costs to the highest levels on record, which in turn contributed to overall click declines.

• CTR declined – overall 13% YoY decrease across all devices. Compared to Q1, CTR declined 9% overall with mobile seeing the most substantial quarter-over-quarter decline of 17%.

• Mobile CPC continues to close the gap with desktop. Consistently on the rise since Q1 2016, mobile CPC increased 17% from Q1 to Q2 of this year and 52% YoY.

• Mobile click share increased – up 22% YoY. User search trends drove advertisers to spend ever-larger percentages of their paid search budgets on mobile, resulting in 60% of clicks coming from mobile vs. 32% from desktop and 8% from tablet.

• Shopping volume increased substantially – highest numbers yet. Shopping impressions were up 78% YoY and clicks were up 49% YoY.

• Shopping volume grew faster on mobile. Compared to other devices, mobile took the lead on Shopping growth with impressions more than doubling (up 102% YoY) and clicks increasing 79% YoY.

• Looking ahead, advertisers can expect current trends to continue. iProspect projects that CPC will continue to rise, forcing advertisers to spend more just to maintain current positioning. With this in mind, advertisers’ budgets and forecasting should assume higher expenses for the remainder of this year.

To learn more about what’s happening now, what to expect for the rest of 2017, and how to get the most out of your paid search efforts, download our full report for more details.