Samsung Vs. Apple In PLAs: Advertisers Spent 3X More On IPhone Ads Than Galaxy In Q2

Mobile device advertisers spent $26.4 million on Google product listing ads in Q2, according to new data from AdGooroo, which looked at 339 mobile device-related keywords. Apple iPhone-related keywords accounted for 45 percent of total spend on PLAs and dwarfed spend on Samsung Galaxy-related keywords.

Among the 327 advertisers found running Google PLAs on the keyword set, AT&T came out as the top spender at $5.8 million, followed by Sprint at $5.4 million. Retailers Best Buy and Walmart came in third and fourth respectively in spend. However, Best Buy scored the most impressions (38,642,000) and clicks (2,397,000) at an average click-through rate of 6.2 percent.

Bset Buy garnered the highest number of impressions in 9 out of the 13 weeks tracked. Walmart apparently ramped its program in June as impressions jumped 160 percent from May. And AdGooroo also saw that Verizon switched to a PLA campaign powered by Google-owned Channel Intelligence in early June.

AdGooroo found that spend was highly concentrated among the top three advertisers, which each spent over $5 million on PLAs during the second quarter. In contrast the average spend among the bottom three advertisers (HSN, TigerDirect and BuyDig) averaged just over $79,000 each.

Apple vs. Samsung

Apple iPhone-related keywords dominated the spend, with “iphone 5s” and “iphone 5c” each topping $4 million in total spend (remember this is before the iPhone 6 came out). Ads for the 5s model led with over 21.4 million impressions and 1.4 million clicks. Combined spend on “iphone”, “iphone 5s” and “iphone 5c” reached $10.4 milllion, or 39 percent of total PLA spending across the 339 mobile device keywords looked at in the study. An additional $1.4 million was spent on 42 other iPhone-related terms, bringing the total spend to $11.8 million and 45 percent share.

Advertisers spend on keywords related to Samsung’s Galaxy phone, by contrast, totaled $3.5 million. Only the keyword “samsung galaxy s4” topped $1 million in spend. The other tracked keywords “samsung galaxy note 3” ($663,000), “galaxy s4” ($401,000) and “samsung galaxy s3” ($251,000).

Interestingly, there were half as many advertisers and ads promoting iPhones as Samsung Galaxy phones via PLAs, yet the iPhone ads received twice as many clicks as the Galaxy ads.

The full report is available for download here.