Mobile Makes Search Inroads

A recent study by Performics found that mobile paid search is now 11 percent of mobile impressions and that tablets provide 13 percent of that total. Despite the popularity of mobile browsing, marketing budgets specifically dedicated to mobile trail that of online and social media, but that is simply part of the industry’s natural growing pains.

“I don’t see mobile being any different than any other of the evolutionary lags,” said Daina Middleton, CEO of Performics, which is part of Publicis Groupe. “Originally there was a lag to “being online” (by brands). There was a lag to social, now we have a lag to mobile. Brands have been doing the same thing for 60 years and old habits are hard to break. All of the tools that we use, the way we measure is based on the old broadcasting model.”

That evolution of mobile, according to Middleton, means that leading brands are missing opportunities by not looking at mobile as an integral part of both brand discovery and ecommerce. “We had a leading brand, one of our clients, find that 12 percent of their sales were coming from mobile, even though their site wasn’t optimized for mobile purchasing,” said Middleton. “They are now saying, ‘maybe I should optimize for mobile first, rather than mobile second, and that is a huge mind shift.”
The Performics study also found that mobile and tablet devices have been tied with CTR on computers over the last year and that tablet activity is heavily weighted towards display, with “virtually no clicks coming from search partners.” Most clicks occurred through Google search.

More in Media

The Rundown: Google has drawn its AI payment lines — and publishers’ leverage is narrow

For publishers trying to navigate AI licensing, the message was blunt: Google is willing to pay for access, but not for training – and it remains unwilling to define AI Overviews as a compensable use of journalism.

search referral traffic for publishers

Media Briefing: Google’s latest core update a reminder that pageviews can’t remain the primary metric

Google’s latest core update signals pageviews can no longer be the primary metric, favoring intent-solving publishers over scale.

After an oversaturation of AI-generated content, creators’ authenticity and ‘messiness’ are in high demand

Content creators and brand marketing specialists on how 2026 will be the year creator authenticity becomes even more crucial in the face of rampant AI-generated “slop” flooding social media platforms.