Welcome to ‘What Happened in Search’.
Packed full of the week’s digital search news each Friday, this week’s edition features Spring cleaning on Adwords, smartphone market domination and Google’s app ads.
YAHOO GAINS SHARE & QUERY VOLUME
Announced last November, the Firefox default search deal continues to pay dividends for Yahoo. ComScore’s US search market share report is out, showing continued volume and share gains for the company.
By comparison, Google saw its second consecutive decline in query volume, while Bing’s share was flat in January. Yahoo’s query volumes were up a significant 11 percent vs. negative growth for AOL, Ask and Google.
ADWORDS SPRING CLEAN
When it comes to AdWords, sometimes the “remove” function doesn’t cut it, and accounts are haunted by the ghosts of ads, ad groups and campaigns that never amounted to anything.
We’re not getting a delete function, but Google is going to be doing some spring cleaning to get rid of the most obvious jetsam in our accounts. Starting the week of March 23, Google will remove any ads that have never earned an impression and have been removed for more than 100 days.
APPLE & ANDROID DOMINATE SMARTPHONE MARKET
Android has most of the devices, while Apple generates the majority of profits, meaning that together they control 96 percent of the global smartphone market.
According to analyst firm and hardware tracker IDC, smartphones running Android and iOS accounted for just over 96 percent of smartphone shipments in Q4. However, of that, Android had an overall market share (shipments) of nearly 82 percent globally.
Apple, which saw share gains in key markets in Q4, had a 2014 market share of roughly 15 percent. Windows Phone shipments grew but Microsoft’s smartphone market share shrank. According to IDC most of the company’s success is at the “entry level” end of the market.
Samsung remained the dominant Android handset maker but its share and shipments were flat. Despite Samsung’s device dominance, Apple earns the majority of smartphone device profits worldwide.
FACEBOOK PASSES 2 MILLION ADVERTISERS
Facebook, making it easier to manage advertising campaigns on the go, today launched an ads manager app for iOS devices.
The move coincides with Facebook’s announcement that it now has more than two million active advertisers, an increase of 500,000 since July. The company says more than 800,000 use the mobile ad manager at least once a month, which is no doubt the motive behind the development of the mobile app.
The app was made available this week for US users in the iOS store and, Facebook says, will be available globally in the next few weeks. An Android version of the app is expected to launch later this year.
GOOGLE PILOTS APP ADS
Google announced this week that it is piloting a test to show ads for apps in its Google Play store.
The test is starting with app discovery ads in search results. Ads are triggered by relevant search queries in the way Google’s AdWords search advertising works.
Search ads on Google Play will enable developers to drive more awareness of their apps and provide consumers with new ways to discover apps that they otherwise might have missed.
WEEKLY VIDEO
5 Effective Analytics Dashboards
Finding effective ways of organizing your analytics dashboards is quite a bit easier if you can get a sense for what has worked for others.
