New surveys and analysis pointing out trends in digital marketing and search advertising pop up every week.
Here are a few interesting data points that caught our eye lately:
- Searches with the terms “nearby” or “near me” doubled from March 2014 to March 2015, says Google. Perhaps predictably, 80 percent of those searches came from mobile devices.
- eMarketer predicts that spending on mobile search ads will overtake desktop search ad spending in 2015. This is a very fast shift: Two years ago mobile accounted for less than a quarter of all digital ad spending.
- Views of “how to” videos on YouTube are growing 70% year over year, says YouTube. An opportunity for brands big and small? Sure seems that way. Google cites millennials as the key drivers of this growth – the company’s consumer study in April 2015 found that 67 percent of millennials agreed that they can find a YouTube video for anything they want to learn.
- A new study from Google and Ipsos shows that consumers are using their phones to research products and services more often but for shorter periods of time. Google has built an entire B2B marketing campaign around what they’re calling “micro-moments,” including an interesting streaming video presentation aimed at marketers.
According to a study by Thrive Analytics, SMBs are devouring content from digital marketing providers to get themselves up the learning curve. But it has to be good content – SMBs say that they look for downloadable product information and whitepapers on digital marketing vendor sites to decide whether those vendors belong on their shortlist. Other interesting points from the study: 37% of the SMBs surveyed said they lacked the skills necessary to do digital marketing, and 40% said they didn’t have enough time to do it.