Mobile, desktop search traffic split analysis @ SearchEngineLand

[littleman]

https://searchengineland.com/mobile-desktop-search-traffic-split-may-have-stabilized-at-roughly-60-40-317091

According to the IAB's annual Internet Advertising Revenue report, released last week, the split between mobile and desktop revenue was roughly 65% to 35% in favor of mobile. Ad spending on the desktop is flat, while mobile (and video) are driving significant growth.

Query volumes, ad-revenue breakdown directionally aligned

Whether a coincidence or a rational response to analytics, the revenue split corresponds roughly to the distribution of (search) traffic according to new data from Hitwise. At its core, mobile ad revenue growth has been driven by three factors: direction and product emphasis from Google and Facebook, as well as consumer adoption of mobile as a primary search and shopping tool.

[I, Brian]

I'd love to know the ROI comparison, though - I've tended to be cynical about that with mobile ads.

[littleman]

Yeah, me too.  In my experience Mobil far under performs desktop.

[buckworks]

My biggest Google ads experience is in a sector that aims primarily at young adults. For mobile to produce the same ROAS / ROI as desktop, CPC bids need to be about 75% less for mobile.

Tablet ROAS is close to par with desktop.

We also find that a significant proportion of purchases are made by users who visited the site first on mobile then came back on a larger device.

[ergophobe]

Mobile looks a lot better for us when we track call conversions.

We can't fully close the loop. We only know the average value of a call and how many calls come from Google Ads either directly (clicked on a number in the ad) or indirectly (clicked on a link in the ad and a number on the web page).

If you have an e-comm biz without a phone sales component, I would guess that mobile conversion would be atrocious. Though we do see some evidence that people have a "research on mobile, buy on desktop" pattern. It's a very loose correlation though. For example, we'll see a spike in mobile traffic followed by a jump in desktop conversion rate.