People are doing more typical desktop activities on their phones? How (not) shocking. According to a new study by Marin Software, consumers are no longer just browsing for products on their smartphones, but are now completing the purchase via mobile as well.
While desktop still beats out mobile and tablet conversation rates, they’re slowly but surely lessening that gap. As reported by the 2014 Q3, smartphones and other mobile devices consist of 31% of paid search impressions and 38% of search ad clicks on Google. Mobile also made up 30% of ad conversions contributing to mobile conversion rates increasing almost 11% year-over-year.
And if you look at Facebook, 1 out of every 3 ad conversions occurred on a mobile device; increasing mobile ad conversions by 16% quarter-over-quarter. 52% of ad impressions and 63% of clicks consisted of mobile ads from Facebook.
If you were to look at click through rates though, you would see that desktop-while still taking the gold in conversion rates-actually gets beaten out by smartphones and tablets in all three types of ads: search, social, and display, with social ads being the highest ranked. The study by Marin Software suggests that the possible shift to mobile over desktop in click through rates for search ads could be based on intent.
When a user is searching for a product, they’re much more likely to click on a result that leads them to the businesses site. Ads that pop up during display and social occur when the user is already doing something and their main focus isn’t searching for products.
It’s hard not to wonder if it could be the lack of distracting ads on mobile devices that lead to the increase of conversion and click through rates. On a desktop you are constantly bombarded with tons of different ads, so it’s hard to focus. With the smaller screen of mobile devices, the ads are limited so it could be easier to emphasize one particular ad at a time.
No matter the reason, mobile is on the rise so it wouldn’t come as a surprise to us if it eventually reigns supreme in every category.
