Report: US Paid Search Spend Up 22 Percent In Q2, Google Regains Share Losses

US paid search spend saw double-digit growth for the third straight quarter in Q2, according to IgnitionOne’s latest report, released Thursday. Spend among advertisers on the management platform rose 22 percent year-over-year, with gains still being driven by growth in mobile search.

Mobile phone spend climbed 71 percent year-over-year, and paid search spend on tablets rose 22 percent. Smartphones accounted for 59 percent of mobile device spending.

Click volume growth remained low, rising just 6 percent in Q2. Yahoo Bing saw clicks increase 25 percent while Google clicks grew just 1 percent year-over-year. IgnitionOne attributes the Yahoo Bing growth to the switch to Enhanced Campaigns and Yahoo’s November deal with Mozilla to be the default search engine on Firefox.

Click-through rates were up by double-digits on both Google (35 percent) and Yahoo Bing (24 percent).

Impressions were off overall again (down 13 percent), largely due to more advertisers pulling out of the Google Display Network “where advertisers have experienced poorer efficiency,” the report states. Google impressions were off 21 percent year-over-year.

CPCs rose 15 percent in Q2, with Google up 17 percent and Yahoo Bing up 12 percent.

Google Regains Market Share Losses

After three quarters of growth, the Yahoo Bing network lost US search market share in Q2, coming in at 24.5 percent of share down from a high of 26.9 percent in Q1.

Yahoo Bing’s market share drop comes even with higher growth rates on smartphones. Smartphone spend on Yahoo Bing rose 78 percent for the quarter, Google was up 69 percent. Smartphone clicks on Yahoo Bing rose just 3 percent, however, compared to Google’s growth of 44 percent

The quarterly report also includes paid search metrics stats by vertical and can be downloaded here.