Not sur­pris­ing­ly, a recent study from Marin Soft­ware finds mobile devices are cap­tur­ing more con­sumer atten­tion and adver­tis­er bud­gets, but it also reveals adver­tis­ers are get­ting bet­ter at opti­miz­ing toward mobile con­ver­sions and that social and dis­play chan­nel CPCs may be a way for adver­tis­ers to get addi­tion­al clicks with­out increas­ing their bud­gets. In addi­tion, Marin says con­sumer behav­ior varies dras­ti­cal­ly by plat­form and under­stand­ing the inter­sec­tion between chan­nel and device is crit­i­cal for mar­keters to reach their tar­get audi­ences and increase con­ver­sions.

Marin Soft­ware, which pro­vides a cross-chan­nel adver­tis­ing cloud for per­for­mance mar­keters, issued its Q3 Per­for­mance Mar­keters’ Bench­mark Report, which looks at quar­ter­ly and year-over-year trends based on the Marin Glob­al Online Adver­tis­ing Index, which tracks more than $6 bil­lion in annu­al­ized ad spend on the Marin plat­form. In par­tic­u­lar, the study ana­lyzed the con­ver­sion rate of mobile ads and found not only that smart­phones and tablets are increas­ing­ly being used by con­sumers to com­plete online pur­chas­es, but smart­phones and tablets now com­prise about one-third of ad con­ver­sions on Face­book and Google.

Social & Search Mobile Ad Conversions Growing

Specif­i­cal­ly, dur­ing Q3 2014, Marin found more than one out of every three ad con­ver­sions on Face­book took place on a mobile device with mobile ad con­ver­sions increas­ing 16 per­cent quar­ter-over-quar­ter. In addi­tion, mobile ads on Face­book account­ed for 52 per­cent of ad impres­sions and 63 per­cent of clicks, Marin report­ed. On Google, Marin found mobile devices com­prised 31 per­cent of paid search impres­sions and 38 per­cent of search ad clicks. Sim­i­lar to Face­book, mobile account­ed for 30 per­cent of ad con­ver­sions with mobile con­ver­sions increas­ing 2.4 per­cent quar­ter-over-quar­ter and near­ly 11 per­cent year-over-year, Marin report­ed. This mobile con­ver­sion trend is con­sis­tent across chan­nels, with sim­i­lar increas­es seen for search, social, and dis­play ads as con­sumers engage more with and com­plete trans­ac­tions from mobile devices, Marin adds. In dis­play adver­tis­ing, Marin report­ed sim­i­lar trends: Mobile devices account­ed for 40 per­cent of ad impres­sions, 54 per­cent of ad clicks and 38.6 per­cent of con­ver­sions. Mobile con­ver­sions increased 4.4 per­cent quar­ter-over-quar­ter and 15.8 per­cent year-over-year. “We have been fol­low­ing this for the past year and it’s pret­ty much on track for our pre­dic­tions from ear­li­er this year,” said Bri­an Lee, mar­ket research ana­lyst at Marin. “It’s just kind of on trend.”

More Consumers Will Convert More Often On Mobile Devices

The rise in ad con­ver­sions on mobile devices sug­gests con­sumers are becom­ing increas­ing­ly more com­fort­able using smart­phones and tablets to com­plete online trans­ac­tions, accord­ing to Marin. What’s more, Marin expects con­sumers to con­tin­ue to increase engage­ment with brands via mobile ads and to com­plete more pur­chas­es with their mobile devices.  Adver­tis­ers, in turn, are tak­ing advan­tage and aug­ment­ing their invest­ment in mobile ads for search, social and dis­play chan­nels, accord­ing to Marin. Adver­tis­ers have also been mak­ing more mobile-friend­ly web­sites and eas­i­er, more intu­itive land­ing pages, and site pages with form fills that are eas­i­er to com­plete on mobile devices, Lee said. “Like, say, a cou­ple of years ago, if you went to mobile site, there was a long form to fill,” Lee said. “Now it’s a lot eas­i­er to check out, link­ing to your Google Wal­let infor­ma­tion or what­ev­er. It’s a lot eas­i­er to con­vert than before.”

The Mobile Disparity: Ad Spend vs. Conversion Share

How­ev­er, a dis­crep­an­cy remains between the amount adver­tis­ers spend on tablets and the clicks on them. For instance, look­ing at search, Lee said there’s about 8 per­cent of spend on tablets ver­sus 15 per­cent of clicks and 12 per­cent of con­ver­sions. “Adver­tis­ers should be look­ing to spend more on tablets because con­sumers are con­vert­ing more often than adver­tis­ers are spend­ing,” Lee said. “The pro­por­tions are off.” In addi­tion, it’s always been dif­fi­cult for mobile adver­tis­ers to cor­rect­ly attribute mobile con­ver­sions because a con­sumer might click on an ad, but then go to a store, make a phone call or com­plete the pur­chase with a desk­top, and it’s hard for adver­tis­ers to track that, Lee said. “Until an adver­tis­er can prop­er­ly attribute these con­ver­sions back to the ini­tial mobile click, it will be hard to defin­i­tive­ly quan­ti­fy the num­ber of mobile con­ver­sions and con­ver­sion rate,” Marin said. “Across the board, there is a dis­par­i­ty in mobile spend ver­sus con­ver­sion share, and under­stand­ing where con­ver­sions are com­ing from can help an adver­tis­er cor­rect­ly allo­cate spend to where it dri­ves the most rev­enue.” And even though it is hard to track and mea­sure, adver­tis­ers need to pay atten­tion to con­sumers who are click­ing on mobile ads because they are far more like­ly to actu­al­ly vis­it stores, Lee added.

60% Of All Spend Is On Mobile For Social

In addi­tion, Marin found about 60 per­cent of all spend is on mobile for social. “Social is a big mobile kind of push­er,” Lee said. “So if you’re look­ing to invest in social, it’s def­i­nite­ly worth also kind of expand­ing more into mobile social than desk­top social.” Mar­keters should take advan­tage of the mobile reach and engage­ment that social plat­forms have, while lever­ag­ing the rel­a­tive­ly high­er con­ver­sion rates on desk­tops and search, Marin said. “Prop­er­ly uti­liz­ing each plat­form and device to their rel­a­tive strengths will become more cru­cial as we enter the hol­i­day sea­son in Q4,” accord­ing to the study.