Performics: Mobile Impressions Cross 10 Percent Threshold

Earlier this year Performics predicted that mobile search would soon reach 10 percent of all the search impressions its clients were seeing. Today the firm said that “mobile impressions accounted for 10.2 percent of all paid search impressions (desktop + mobile).”

The company also said that mobile now represents 9.8 percent of paid clicks. It added that “Q1 YoY growth for mobile clicks outpaced impressions, increasing by 230 percent.” That’s compared with PC clicks, which grew only 13.7 percent during the same time period.

However Performics said that mobile CTRs are somewhat below desktop CTRs. It said also that mobile CPCs were 42 percent lower than desktop CPCs.

On the latter two points there’s very mixed evidence in the market, with some SEM firms saying that mobile CPCs are higher, while CTR is lower and some firms saying that mobile CTR is better and costs are lower.

For example, here’s some iCrossing data from earlier this year showing mobile CPC being higher than desktop:

Despite such disagreements and data inconsistencies, the big takeaway is that mobile is an increasing source of traffic and so marketers need an optimized presence for mobile devices and increasingly need to be doing paid search and Click2Call specifically for mobile.