Adobe: 2014 Q2 search advertising report shows that US search advertising spending increased by 9% and Google's cost per click increased by 4%

Before Google released its quarterly earnings announcement, Adobe released its latest search advertising data report. Based on its own cloud marketing system, the company found that US search advertising spending increased by 9% year-on-year, mainly due to the increase in clicks. For the whole year, including the traditional fourth quarter peak season, Adobe expects spending to increase by 10%-12%.

Unsurprisingly, the leader in search ad spending is Google, which accounts for 78% of Adobe's customers in this market. This is down slightly from 80% in the first quarter and 82% in the fourth quarter of 2013, but is consistent with the 78% Adobe reported a year ago. This may be partly due to seasonality, but overall, Google's position seems to be stable.

Another 22% of customers choose Yahoo/Bing, which has grown its share of the UK market to 8.8% but remains negligible in Germany, where Google has 96% of the search advertising market. (Its monopoly also explains why many European governments are more critical of it than the US government.)

The overall analysis is based on observing more than 200 billion search impressions from more than 500 cloud marketing system customers using Adobe's programmatic advertising platform, with a value of approximately US$2 billion.

Cost per click, one of the main indicators of Google's success, rose slightly by 4% year-on-year. Bing's cost per click fell by 6%.

Perhaps the most interesting statistic from the report is that growth in search ad spending on tablets has stalled. It now accounts for 14% of total search ad spending, up only slightly from 12% 10 months ago. Meanwhile, mobile search ad spending on tablets has increased from 10% to 15%.

Another interesting statement was that Google's click-through rate increased by 20%. Adobe believes that this increase is at least partly due to Google's new ad format, which looks like an organic part of the search results page (thus making it more tempting for people to click on the ad). Adobe found that the increase in click-through rate was seen in different industries.

199IT original compilation Translator Jane