Paid Search Growth Coming From North America, Though CPCs Were Flat In Q3 [Adobe]

Global paid search ad spend increased 10 percent year over year in Q3 2015, according to Adobe’s latest digital advertising report, which looks at billions of aggregated ad impressions across the Adobe Marketing Cloud.

That’s down more than half from the year-over-year growth of 22 percent Adobe reported in Q3 2014. The slower rate of growth was due to sluggish increases in Europe and Asia Pacific, where spend was up seven percent and two percent respectively. By comparison, paid search spend in North America rose 17 percent in Q3 2015. Average cost per click in North America, however, remained stagnant.

Bing Spend Growth Continues To Outpace Google

In Q3 2015, global spend on Bing rose 17 percent, compared to 11 percent on Google year over year. That pace is down significantly from the 39-percent increase in spend Bing saw last year, however. (Google’s year-over-year spend growth in Q3 2014 was 13 percent.)

While both engines saw 19 percent growth in North America, Bing’s growth far outpaced that of Google in Europe and Asia Pacific regions. In Europe, spend increased by nine percent on Google and 19 percent on Bing. In Asia Pacific, Google spend bumped up just two percent, compared to 10 percent on Bing.

Growth and market share are two different things, of course. Across the Adobe Marketing Cloud, Google had 71 percent spend share, Bing 21 percent and Yahoo and others held eight percent of spend share in Q3 2015.

Google CTRs Continue To See Significant Gains

Despite faster spend growth on Bing, Google continues to reign in efficiency. Click-through rates (CTR) improved 16 percent on Google ads versus a seven-percent increase in CTR on Bing.

You can view the complete report here.