The Q3 2014 Performance Marketer’s
Benchmark Report:
Vital Search, Social & Display
Performance Data by Device
WHITE PAPER

The Q3 2014 Performance Marketer’s Benchmark Report:
Vital Search, Social & Display Performance Data by Device
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction 03
Methodology 03
Key Takeaways 03
Shifting Landscape of Device Usage Amongst Consumers 03
Advertiser Response to Changing Consumer Trends 04
Performance Across Search, Social and Display by Device 07
Conclusions 09
About Marin Software 10
Copyright © 2014 Marin Software Inc. All rights reserved. 2

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The Q3 2014 Performance Marketer’s Benchmark Report:
Vital Search, Social & Display Performance Data by Device
INTRODUCTION
Historically, Q3 has been a critical quarter for advertisers across all key verticals. Many
marketers use Q3 as a way to get ready for Q4, which is frequently their most important
quarter. But how should advertisers plan their spending to get the most bang for their
buck? To answer this question, we took a look at the Marin Global Online Advertising
Index to try and understand how device and platform performance have shaped up over
the past quarter.
METHODOLOGY
To understand device and platform performance for Q3 2014, we sampled the Marin
Global Online Advertising Index, which looks at over $6 billion worth of advertising
spend in the Marin platform. The Index consists of enterprise-class marketers: larger
advertisers and agencies who spend in excess of $1 million annually on paid-search,
social, and display advertising channels. As such, our data sample and findings skew
towards the behavior of larger organizations and more sophisticated advertisers.
We examined this data longitudinally year-to-date, and measured key performance
indicators (KPIs) on a quarter-over-quarter (QoQ) basis. Wherever possible, we used
medians and indexed values to more clearly highlight overall trends instead of overall
values. This allowed us to mitigate the effects of outliers, and make the findings more
representative of the performance of the typical Marin client. We focused our findings
on device and platform data. Please note that for the social channel, it was only
possible to break out the data on the desktop and mobile device level. Mobile device is
an aggregate of both smartphone and tablet.
KEY TAKEAWAYS:
1. Mobile devices are taking up more and more consumer attention and advertiser budget
than ever before.
2. Consumers are still converting on desktops over mobile devices, although advertisers
are getting better at optimizing towards mobile conversions.
3. Differences in click-through rates, cost-per-click, and conversion rates across channels
require a more holistic approach to spending.
SHIFTING LANDSCAPE OF DEVICE USAGE AMONGST CONSUMERS
Over the past several years, we have come to live in an increasingly multi-device world.
The explosive growth and spread of smartphones and tablets have fundamentally
changed how people communicate, socialize, and purchase products. QoQ smartphone
usage has risen across all channels. Consumers are now using mobile devices more
than ever, driving over 50% of all social sharing.1 According to ComScore, consumers
are spending one out of every three minutes of all online browsing time on mobile
devices2 and that activity is only expected to increase. By the end of 2014, there will
1 http://www.iab.net/media/file/ShareThis_CSTR_July2014.pdf
2 http://www.comscore.com/Insights/Presentations-and-Whitepapers/2013/2013-Mobile-Future-in-Focus

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The Q3 2014 Performance Marketer’s Benchmark Report:
Vital Search, Social & Display Performance Data by Device
be 1.2 billion smartphones sold, 23.8% greater than last year.3 From Q1 to Q2 2014,
mobile browsing activity grew 19%, with online browsing activity on smartphones
growing by 27.8%. Conversely, desktop browsing activity dropped 5.5%.4 This
increased mobile browsing activity signals a shift in consumer behavior from desktops,
to smartphones and tablets.
ADVERTISER RESPONSE TO CHANGING CONSUMER TRENDS
As a result of the apparent shifts in consumer device usage towards smartphones and
tablets, advertisers are also beginning to adapt their strategies to focus more on these
devices. We took a look at search, social, and display advertisers in the Marin Global
Online Advertising Index to understand just how consumer behavior has changed
advertiser spend across the globe. Unsurprisingly, there have been large shifts away
from desktop over the last few years, with mobile devices taking up more and more of
advertiser budgets and time.
Across search, we’ve seen mobile device (smartphones and tablets) share increase
significantly in the past year, with smartphones capturing the lion’s share of the growth.
Year-over-year (YoY), desktops have lost 8.5% click share, with smartphones snapping
up 6.1%. While advertisers devote just over 42% of all spend on mobile devices,
mobile conversions only make up about 30% of search conversions. What this means
is twofold: 1. That advertisers still have issues with correctly attributing mobile
conversions as well as converting a mobile search click to a mobile conversion, and
2. That consumers are still not as comfortable on converting on mobile as they are on
desktops. As many customers use mobile devices for initial research on products, the
gap between mobile click share and conversion share may be explained by consumers
using mobile advertising to initiate the purchase cycle, which they complete in store. In
fact, according to Google, mobile clicks may convert into in-store purchases,5 or saved
as a reference for a later at-home purchase on a desktop due to the relative ease of
desktop form-fills. Interestingly, while smartphone spend outpaces smartphone clicks
and conversions, we see an opposite trend with tablet devices, which makes up only
8% of ad spend, but 15% of clicks and 12.4% of conversions.
Search Advertising Share by Device: Q3 2014
Desktops Smartphones Tablets
13.6% 15.0% 8.0% 12.4%
17.5% 22.7% 34.5% 17.4%
68.9% 62.2% 57.4%
3 http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS25058714
4 http://www.iab.net/media/file/ShareThis_CSTR_July2014.pdf
5 http://adwords.blogspot.com/2013/02/understanding-full-value-of-mobile.html
70.2%
Impressions Clicks Spend Conversions

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The Q3 2014 Performance Marketer’s Benchmark Report:
Vital Search, Social & Display Performance Data by Device
-5.5%
Search Advertising Share: Year over Year Change
Desktops Smartphones Tablets
-8.5% -7.6%
Device share for the display advertising channel exhibits similar characteristics to
search. Mobile impression, click, spend, and conversion share amongst display
advertisers has grown at a significantly higher rate YoY than search. Smartphones
have taken up much of this growth, with desktops losing over 10% click share, which
has almost exclusively shifted to smartphones. There is a much heavier mobile device
focus for display than there is for search. Almost half of all display spend in Q3 was
on mobile devices, and over half of clicks. Again, there is a discrepancy between
smartphone and tablet spend versus clicks, where tablet clicks outpace tablet spend,
and vice versa for smartphones. This is due to the aforementioned increase in mobile
device usage across the world and the corresponding increase in mobile display ad
exchanges. Mobile-focused display advertising has been on many advertisers’ minds,
with Google even recently revealing new mobile display ad formats.6
Display Advertising Share by Device: Q3 2014
Desktops Smartphones Tablets
12.9% 16.5% 9.8% 15.9%
6 http://venturebeat.com/2014/09/29/google-rolls-out-new-display-ads-for-mobile/
-10.3%
2.9%
6.1% 6.4%
10.6%
2.6% 2.4% 1.2%
-0.3%
Impressions Clicks Spend Conversions
60.5%
45.8% 50.0%
61.4%
26.6%
37.7%
40.1% 22.7%
Impressions Clicks Spend Conversions

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The Q3 2014 Performance Marketer’s Benchmark Report:
Vital Search, Social & Display Performance Data by Device
Display Advertising Share: Year over Year Change
Desktops Smartphones Tablets
12.1% 10.2%
-14.1%
2.0% 0.2%
-10.4%
20.1%
10.9%
-4.8%
-15.3% -15.8%
5.0%
Impressions Clicks Spend Conversions
In Q3, over 50% of impressions, clicks, and spend on social channels were on mobile
devices. This is because social networks have the fastest mobile user growth of any
channel. In Q2 this year, over a billion Facebook users accessed the site via a mobile
device, with about 400 million of those users being mobile-only.7 This explosive mobile
usage for social channels has fueled advertisers to pour money into this channel.
However, social conversion share by device is still mostly desktop-focused, with 65%
of all social conversions happening on a desktop computer. In fact, social mobile
conversion share is less than display conversion share, even though social mobile click
and spend share are far greater than display. There is a disconnect between social
channel spend and actual conversions. Consumer intent on social networks does not
center on finding products and services, which makes them less likely to convert. This
is in contrast with consumer intent on search, where the very act of searching is when
they are directly looking for specific items, which increases chances of engagement
and conversion on ads.
Social Advertising Share by Device: Q3 2014
47.7%
Desktops Mobile
37.0% 39.1%
64.8%
52.3%
63.0% 60.9%
35.2%
Impressions Clicks Spend Conversions
7 http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/02/04/overseas-users-power-facebooks-growth-more-going-mobile-only/

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The Q3 2014 Performance Marketer’s Benchmark Report:
Vital Search, Social & Display Performance Data by Device
PERFORMANCE ACROSS SEARCH, SOCIAL, AND DISPLAY BY DEVICE
This shift in both consumer behavior and advertiser spend has also affected how
consumers interact and engage with advertising. Understanding advertiser click-through
rates, cost-per-click, and conversion rate reveal the story in how the bottom
line has been affected.
When we look at click-through rate by platform, we see very similar trends across
search, social, and display. Smartphones are clearly the device with the highest click-through
rate, suggesting that mobile devices, and especially smartphones, may capture
the majority of consumer engagement. However, search stands out as the clear leader
in click-through rate across all devices when compared to performance on social and
display channels. Social and display click-through rates lag behind sharply, with both
under 1%. Historically, social and display CTRs have always been significantly behind
search due to consumer behavior. Display and social ads are served when consumer
intent is not centered on searching for a product or service, and thus consumers are
unlikely to interact with them. In addition, display is a passive channel, which lowers
the possibility of consumer engagement.
2.1%
Click Through Rate
Desktops Smartphones Tablets
0.4%
0.2%
3.1%
0.6%
0.4%
2.6%
0.3%
Search Social Display
Conversion rates tell us a completely different story. While CTRs are lowest on
desktops, conversion rates are much higher on desktops than on mobile devices.
Consumers are simply more willing to buy when on a desktop than on a mobile device.
Again, this is partly due to mobile behavior, such as using a smartphone for research
or an in-store visit, and also partly due to the relative ease of converting on desktop
versus mobile devices. Attribution on mobile devices is much more difficult for
marketers to quantify and has remained a challenge for many. There is still a lot of
room for advertisers to improve when it comes to mobile conversion and mobile
attribution tracking.
Copyright © 2014 Marin Software Inc. All rights reserved.

The Q3 2014 Performance Marketer’s Benchmark Report:
Vital Search, Social & Display Performance Data by Device
Conversion Rate
Desktops Smartphones Tablets
When we look at cost-per-click, we can see that it closely mirrors conversion rate
behavior (above). Desktops are the leader in CPC for search, social, and display, and
mobile devices lag behind, perhaps due to the lower conversion rates that can be easily
attributed to smartphones and tablets. Interestingly, tablet search CPC is lower than
that of smartphone, even though tablet conversion rates are higher. In addition, search
CPCs are much higher than those of social and display, meaning that advertisers can
buy more clicks for the same amount of spend on non-search channels. Also of note is
how close desktop and mobile CPCs are for the social channel. This is a signal that
with the increased investment in mobile on social, CPCs are levelling off and
approaching parity with desktops.
Cost Per Click
Desktops Smartphones Tablets
84 87
Copyright © 2014 Marin Software Inc. All rights reserved. 8
9.8%
1.0%
5.1%
6.7%
0.3%
2.3%
7.2%
3.6%
Search Social Display
100
16
14
50
73
61
Search Social Display

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The Q3 2014 Performance Marketer’s Benchmark Report:
Vital Search, Social & Display Performance Data by Device
CONCLUSIONS
Over the past year, it has become clear that mobile devices and cross-channel
marketing are becoming more and more an important part of digital marketing. Across
all channels, mobile devices have been on the forefront of consumer and advertiser
attention, with huge portions of ad spend and consumer time moving away from
desktops towards smartphones and tablets. Consumer behavior also varies drastically
by platform, and understanding the intersection between channel and device is crucial
for the smart marketer to reach their audience and guide them towards conversion.
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. Properly utilizing each platform and device to their relative strengths will
become more crucial as we enter the holiday season in Q4.
Advertisers also must closely examine their mobile campaigns in order to improve their
conversion tracking. As mentioned before, mobile clicks can translate into in-store
visits, phone calls, or desktop conversions. 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. 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.
Online advertising will only continue to shift across both channel and device as the
marketplace becomes more saturated with smartphones and tablets around the world.
With tools like Marin Software to help advertisers understand cross-channel and device
performance, it becomes easier for advertisers to find crucial opportunities in this ever-changing
space to reach and engage their audiences.
Copyright © 2014 Marin Software Inc. All rights reserved.

The Q3 2014 Performance Marketer’s Benchmark Report:
Vital Search, Social & Display Performance Data by Device
ABOUT MARIN SOFTWARE
Marin Software Incorporated (NYSE:MRIN) provides a leading cross-channel advertising
cloud for performance marketers to measure, manage and optimize more than $6 billion in
annualized ad spend across the web and mobile devices. Offering an integrated SaaS
platform for search, display and social advertising, Marin helps digital marketers improve
financial performance, save time, and make better decisions. Advertisers use Marin to
create, target, and convert precise audiences based on recent buying signals from users’
search, social and display interactions. Headquartered in San Francisco, with offices
worldwide, Marin's technology powers marketing campaigns in more than 160 countries.
For more information about Marin's products, please visit:
http://www.marinsoftware.com/solutions/overview.
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