Car Makers Drove 14.4 Million Clicks From Google Ads In 2 Months (And That Doesn’t Include Mobile)

By Ginny Marvin

Published: March 27, 2014 at 3:11 pm

A whopping 177 automotive manufacture sites drove 14.4 million paid search clicks from Google ads on desktops and tablets this January and February.

Of those 177 advertisers, the top 20 advertisers (roughly 11 percent) accounted for 81 percent of the paid search clicks in the two month period, according to new data from search marketing intelligence firm Adgooroo.

Looking at desktop/tablet impression share, Toyota led the pack with its two sites: Toyota.com and Buytoyota.com. Ford.com, Chevrolet.com and Honda.com round out the share of voice leaders.

Another 23 sites battled it out for a decent share of visibility, while the remaining 149 advertisers accounted for roughly the same impression share as Chevrolet.com alone.

Automotvive Sites Paid Search Impression Share

A look at the highly fragmented share of impressions in the automotive sector, AdWords Desktop/Tablet.

Adgooroo looked at a mobile performance as well and found a similar fragmentation among advertisers. Chevrolet.com and Toyota.com hold the top spots in mobile as well, but Dodge.com and NissanUSA.com each hold a larger share of voice on mobile than they do on desktop/tablet.

Adgooroo looked at a subset of keywords in their mobile analysis, so they did not provide click or impression data for comparison to desktop/tablet.

I asked Adgooroo about historical trends for the automotive sector on paid search. A representative provided the following desktop/tablet spend data on U.S. AdWords in the Automotive Manufacturer category:

2010 $115 million
2011 $165 million
2012 $195 million
2013 $178 million

Wondering why that steady growth trend appears to have slowed last year? Adgooroo suspects it’s on account of mobile, stating,

Although spend dropped between 2012 and 2013, we believe that dip is attributable to a shift in spend from Desktop/Tablet to Mobile Search. We do not have Mobile Search spend for 2013 because we debuted our mobile search product in 2014. However, our data shows that Mobile Search spend in January and February this year was at least $1.3 million and probably higher. Averaging the total for January and February ($1.3 million) over a full year, for instance, would add approximately $7.8 million to the Desktop/Tablet total, without even considering seasonality.

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Editorial disclosure

Contributing authors are chosen for their expertise and work under the oversight of the editorial staff. Search Engine Land is owned by Semrush. The contributor was not asked to mention Semrush; the opinions expressed are their own.

About the author

Ginny Marvin

Ginny Marvin was Third Door Media’s former Editor-in-Chief (October 2018 to December 2020), running the day-to-day editorial operations across all publications and overseeing paid media coverage. Ginny Marvin wrote about paid digital advertising and analytics news and trends for Search Engine Land, MarTech and MarTech Today. With more than 15 years of marketing experience, Ginny has held both in-house and agency management positions. She can be found on Twitter as @ginnymarvin.