Advertisers have never been willing to pay as much for someone who clicks on their ad on a smartphone than someone who does so on a PC. But consumers’ massive shift toward mobile devices is driving up demand for mobile clicks and therefore shrinking the gap.
The new RKG Digital Marketing Report estimates that in Q2 2013 the cost per click for ads on smartphones reached 60% of that of the CPC for ads on desktops and laptops. That was a significant increase from 55% a year earlier and 47% two years earlier. RKG is a Charlottesville, Va.-based provider of SEO, paid search and other marketing services to online businesses.
The gap in ad rates is closing because far more of the consumer action is on smartphones. The study shows that the number of smartphone clicks in Q2 2013 was up an exponential 179% over the same period a year earlier. In the same period, consumers clicked on 7% fewer ads on desktops or laptops.
Despite their decline, desktops and laptops remain hugely important in online advertising, accounting for 72% of paid search clicks in the most recent quarter. But the momentum is shifting fast to smartphones and tablets, whose share of paid search clicks doubled from 13% in Q2 2012 to 28% in Q2 2013.
This story originally appeared in Profit
