According to data exclusively revealed in The Drum, digital marketing solutions tools from Kenshoo have shown that the UK has overtaken the US on paid-search CPCs in the fourth quarter of 2012.

Per the report by Jessica Davies:

UK search spend jumped 21 per cent from the third to fourth quarter to 1.26 billion, while the US saw spend climb even further with a 30 per cent rise, but Europe saw volume spend drop by four per cent.
CPCs in the UK rose by ten cents taking the total CPC to $0.48, overtaking the US CPC of $0.45 in the final quarter and dwarfing the rest of Europe which saw CPCs drop to $0.35 in the final quarter.

Mobile spend has been revealed as significantly lower in UK budgets, accounting for just 2% as opposed to 5% in the US. Smartphone ads are priced at £0.07 and tablets £0.23; desktops remain the most expensive platform at £0.29. Despite mobile devices offering better price and value, it seems marketers are reluctant to shift from traditional expenditure. 

Speaking to The Drum, Starcom MediaVest's Paul Kasamias gave his opinion on the report.

"Our data also shows that overall query volume for desktop has fallen by up to 23 per cent year on year in some cases, with a dramatic increase in queries on both tablet and mobile devices - up to 226 per cent in some cases. Because mobile devices in particular do not provide the ROI of desktop, advertisers continue to try and reap the rewards from desktop which provides them with the overall highest ROI."

“We can’t expect a phone to deliver the same web-based conversion techniques therefore we must find other ways to define a conversion," said Aaron Goldman, Kenshoo chief marketing officer.

"Things like app downloads, time spent, pages visited, store locators, shareability – these are ways we should be using to measure the effectiveness of mobile. Marketers don’t understand the value of the metrics and therefore don’t spend as much."



You can read the full report and analysis here.