AdGooroo: PC and tablet product listing ads accounted for 52% of paid search ad spending during this shopping season

199IT original compilation

Search engines are an important channel for marketers to reach consumers searching and shopping online this shopping season, and of course Google is leading the way. With the busiest holiday shopping weekend of the year over (i.e. November 27 to December 1, 2014), AdGooroo surveyed the top 20 paid search advertisers (based on US Google text ads and product catalog ads PLAs) for the top 2,856 retail keywords on PC and mobile devices.

According to AdGooroo, PC and tablet catalog ads accounted for 52% of paid search ad spending between Thanksgiving and Cyber ​​Monday. Catalog ads are a type of Google ad that displays relevant product images, prices and other features after consumers enter product keywords. PC and tablet catalog ads accounted for 39% of transactions. Although mobile is important for e-commerce traffic and revenue this shopping season, retail marketers only invest 7% of their paid search ad budgets in mobile catalog ads and 2% in mobile text ads, showing that mobile paid search ad spending still lags behind the popularity of mobile devices among consumers.

Text ads provide a broader search than product listing ads, contain more information, and link directly to product pages on e-commerce websites, displaying directly in response to transactional queries. Digital marketing agency RKG estimates that more than half of non-branded retail search clicks in the third quarter of 2014 came from product listing ads, and product listing ads outperform text ads in every metric (except average order value). Product listing ads focus more on the product, while text ads speak for the brand.

This means that this shopping season, product information is as important as keywords, mainly due to the growth of product catalog ads, which are designed specifically for products. Among the advertisers surveyed by AdGooroo, Best Buy spent the most on search, totaling $1.9 million, mainly investing its spending on PC and tablet PLAs. Wal-Mart, Kohl's, Target and Amazon.com rounded out the top five in paid search ad spending during the shopping season.

While colorful images and price lists make it easier for consumers to search for gifts, eight of the top 20 advertisers spent more on text ads than catalog ads. AdGooroo reports that 59% of the top 20 retailers’ paid search budgets went to catalog ads on PC, tablets and phones, compared to 41% for text ads.

Compiled from: eMarketer Translator: Sun Ying