HAS THE DESKTOP / MOBILE TRAFFIC SPLIT STABILISED?

IT LOOKS LIKE THE MOBILE / DESKTOP SPLIT HAS STABILISED AT APPROXIMATELY 60%:40%

Do you know anyone who does not use their smartphones to shop online or immediately open a search engine for any queries? Well, even if there are, they can easily be counted off on our fingers!

The smartphones have influenced people to such an extent that a significant percentage of our shopping experience and searches are through mobile phones. According to a recent analysis by Stone Temple, with statistics pulled from the SimilarWeb, 58% of online visitors were mobile phone users while the rest 42% were desktop users in the year 2018.

INCREASE IN MOBILE AD REVENUES

IAB’s annual Internet Advertising Revenue Report released at the beginning of May coincidentally mentions a similar ratio of mobile to desktop ad revenues. According to this report, the ad revenues from mobile phones registered a 65% growth while compared to the 35% increase with desktops.

This increase in mobile ad revenues has grown considerably from around 56% in 2017, with videos playing a major role in the growth of the revenue. Apart from the videos, the larger corporate companies have started investing in Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology and other programmatic ad revenue techniques to increase the reach and conversion rates.

In the past few years, the small vendors have started forming partnerships with these corporates to leverage these technologies, get access to the tools and the information and create creative, cost-effective ad campaigns.

IS IT REALLY 60%:40%?

Based on the report ’Mobile Search: Topics & Themes’ released by Hitwise in 2016, mobile phone search volume in the US amounted to 58%. In another recent analysis by Hitwise, the search volumes through mobile phones seem to have stabilised around that number, which leads us to the approximate ratio of 60%:40% with mobile phones leading it.

In the analysis by Stone Temple, there was another surprising discovery with the same 60%:40%. The page views per visit in desktop amounted to around 58% while the mobile phone visits amounted to about 42%. This reversal of the coincidental 60%:40% ratio can be attributed to the ease of use in surfing through desktop than mobile phones. This is why Google has been urging to create mobile-friendly websites to give a better experience to the users.

IS MOBILE SEM STILL ON THE CARDS?

From the various reports and analysis observed, there is a certain stagnancy at 60%:40% with respect to mobile phones and desktops. With such dormancy in the past three years, will your digital marketing agency concentrate on mobile SEM?

Though the mobile ad spending has increased considerably in the past few years, due to a stagnant hit in the mobile phone users, we can expect a decline or another flat graph for the ad revenue in the years to come. It is up to the marketing experts to improve the mobile user experience with mobile-friendly web pages or lean more towards leveraging new technologies to get better conversions towards mobile ads.