Retailers Spending Record Levels On Paid Search In 2013 Holiday Season

An early look at the paid search performance this holiday season shows retailers invested at record levels, beginning earlier, and are realizing new levels of revenue from their paid search efforts this year. The record highs in paid search activity set in 2012 were surpassed this year as clicks increased 27 percent, impressions rose 12.5 […]

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holiday-shopping-featuredAn early look at the paid search performance this holiday season shows retailers invested at record levels, beginning earlier, and are realizing new levels of revenue from their paid search efforts this year.

The record highs in paid search activity set in 2012 were surpassed this year as clicks increased 27 percent, impressions rose 12.5 percent and spending jumped 34 percent globally, according to Kenshoo’s seasonal shopping reporting to date.

Global retail click-through rates (CTR) increased 12.8 percent from 2012. Healthy click through rates meant that advertisers realized 27 percent more clicks year-over-year on a 34 percent increase in spend.

global holiday search trends kenshooThe shorter selling season meant retailers began ramping spend earlier ahead of the Thanksgiving weekend. According to the Kenshoo report, retailers spent as much on the days leading up to U.S. Thanksgiving in 2013 as they did on the weekend before Cyber Monday.

global search spend holiday season yoy kenshooOverall, global paid search revenues rose 19 percent year-over-year for online retailers. Cyber Monday revenue increased 5.8 percent from 2012.global retail revenue 2012 v 2013 paid search kenshoo

US Paid Search Spend Rose Nearly 50 Percent

In the US, retailers increased paid search spend by 48.1 percent during the shopping season. Marketers in the US also ramped their holiday spending earlier this year, reflecting the global trend. Clicks jumped 42 percent, with an  impression increase of just 24 percent due to a 14 percent bump in CTR.

Merchant revenues from US paid search increased by 31 percent from 2012. From November 9th on, US merchant revenue continued to exceed that of 2012 on a daily basis right up until Cyber Monday when revenue was flat year-over-year.

us retail revenue 2012 v 2013 paid search kenshoo

Devices — Mobile Revenue Share More Than Doubles

Revenue share from computers fell by 14.4 percent year-over-year to 77 percent. Revenue share from tablets more than doubled from 7.8 percent to 18.9 percent in 2013. Mobile phone share of ad spend increased 17.7 percent this year and click share rose 20.4 percent. Overall, global revenue share from phones was 4.1 percent — a small percentage, but more than double from 2012.

Tablet share of spend nearly doubled this year to come in line with phone spend share. Tablet took the bulk of revenue share from desktops, more than doubling from 2012 to 19 percent of the total.

global holiday shopping metrics by device 2012 v 2013 paid search kenshoo


Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.


About the author

Ginny Marvin
Contributor
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.

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