You’ve probably heard a lot about mobile in the past two years. In PriceWaterhouseCoopers 18th annual Global CEO Study (2015), 81% of CEOs said that mobile technologies are strategically important to their business. PWC says, “The sheer ubiquity of mobile devices today has revolutionised customers’ ability to obtain information – which has, in turn, transformed how they perceive value and the type of relationships they want to have with companies.”
PWC Technology Infographic
Everyday we see more and more evidence that mobile has to be a top priority for large and small companies. Not only are the sheer numbers of mobile devices and mobile users increasing every day, but the reliance on these devices increases every day. Merkle RKG produces a quarterly Digital Marketing Report that has lots of information about where advertisers spend their money and the resulting consumer clicks. Here are some interesting data points from Merkle RKG’s first quarter 2015 report:
- Mobile Paid Search Ad Spend was 32% of all ad spend in Q1. That’s up from under 20% in Q1 2013. Advertisers have increased buying mobile ads 60% in just two years.
- 44% of paid search clicks on Google came from mobile devices. So almost half of all ads clicked were ads displayed on mobile devices.
- Desktop ad clicks dropped another 4% in Q1 on top of a drop of 3% in Q4 2014. At the same time, phone clicks were up 42% in Q1 and tablet clicks were up 9%. Tablet clicks were at 28% in Q4 2014, so the growth rate for tablets has slowed.
- Mobile Organic Search Clicks accounted for 45% of all clicks in Q1 2015. That’s up from 34% in Q1 2014. That’s a 32% increase in just one year.
From those numbers it is clear that mobile devices are important to advertisers and search engines. From the click rates, it is also clear that mobile is very important to consumers.
But what if you haven’t jumped on the mobile bandwagon yet? Will that hurt you? If you don’t really participate in paid advertising or paid search, does this matter to you?
Well Google is about to make that pain more real for companies who don’t make their sites mobile- friendly. Google has decided to include “mobile- friendly” in its rankings for search results. If your site is not mobile-friendly, then your ranking will drop on Google. While your Search Engine Optimization efforts over the past few years have moved you up in the search results, this new designation will drop you back down. How real is this mobile-friendly ranking?
According to Merkle RKG, Google has identified 29% of the Internet Retailer 500 websites as not mobile-friendly. For all Fortune 500 websites, 46% do not meet Google standards for mobile-friendly. Wow, half the Fortune 500 websites are at risk if they don’t revamp their sites.
It should be clear why 81% of CEOs think that mobile is strategically important. Not only are there a lot of mobile devices, but consumers, advertisers and Google are paying a lot of attention to content delivered on mobile.
