New Kenshoo Study Finds UK Retail Brands Investing 20% More on Paid Search During 2012 Christmas Season

LONDON, December 17, 2012 /PRNewswire/ --

Tablets and mobile phones comprise nearly 30% of retail paid search clicks, and affluent tablet owners place biggest orders

Online retailers in the UK are spending 20% more on paid search advertising year-on-year this Christmas shopping season, with tablets and mobile phones representing 28% of clicks on retail paid search ads through Google and other major search engines, according to the latest data from global digital marketing technology leader Kenshoo (http://www.kenshoo.com).

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The Kenshoo 2012 UK Online Retail Christmas Shopping Report - Early Edition, which compares search advertising impressions, clicks and conversions from retailers using the Kenshoo platform during the Christmas shopping seasons in 2011 and 2012¹, indicates that the share of clicks from personal computers is down to 72%, with tablets comprising 15% of all clicks and mobile phones accounting for 13%.

Furthermore, shoppers that use tablet devices, who are generally more affluent, are spending more, with an average order value (AOV) of £85.55 compared with £75.93 for computer users. Tablets represent 16% of all sales conversions and 17% of all revenue with a conversion rate nearly on par with computers, approximately 5%. This presents a great opportunity for advertisers to optimise sales and budgets across devices as it is costing £0.05 less per click to reach tablet-based shoppers compared to those using computers.

Below is a breakdown by device across key paid search metrics for UK retailers during the 2012 Christmas season to date:

                                                                Average     Cost
                                                   Conversion     Order      Per
              Clicks  Conversions  Revenue   Cost        Rate     Value    Click

    Computer     72%          81%      80%    79%       5.16%  GBP75.93  GBP0.32
    Phone        13%           3%       3%     7%       1.00%  GBP77.80  GBP0.16
    Tablet       15%          16%      17%    14%       4.99%  GBP85.55  GBP0.27

"Tablet shoppers are a gold mine," said Chris Ward, managing director for EMEA at Kenshoo. "They convert at higher rates and spend more money than the average online shopper. Device segmentation should be a key search marketing strategy for UK retailers to adopt this Christmas shopping season. The savviest retailers are breaking out their keywords, ads and landing pages by computer, phone and tablet to better control budgets and bids."

Overall, the retail paid search market has been more competitive in the U.K. this season with cost per click (CPC) rates up by 26% on the same period last year.

The data set underpinning the report covers 450+ million paid impressions and clicks on search engines, including Google, Yahoo! and Bing that delivered more than £40 million in online sales revenues during the Christmas Season periods. It includes all major retail categories such as, but not limited to, electronics, books, apparel, appliances, shoes, sporting goods and more. Final figures and year-on-year analyses will be released in the full Kenshoo 2012 U.K. Online Retail Christmas Shopping Report, available in early January.

¹ Christmas Season is defined as the 40 days leading up to and including Green Monday in the UK. This is 3rd November to 12th December in 2011 and 1st November to 10th December in 2012.

About Kenshoo

Kenshoo is a digital marketing technology company that engineers premium solutions for search marketing, social media and online advertising. Brands, agencies and developers use Kenshoo Enterprise, Kenshoo Local and Kenshoo Social to direct more than £16 billion in annual client sales revenue. The Kenshoo Universal Platform delivers automation, intelligence, integration and scale to make better marketing investments. With campaigns running in more than 190 countries for nearly half of the Fortune 50 and all 10 top global ad agency networks, Kenshoo's UK clients include Accor, Burberry, GroupM, Havas, John Lewis, Omnicom and Tesco. Kenshoo has 16 international locations and is backed by Sequoia Capital, Arts Alliance and Tenaya Capital. Please visit http://www.Kenshoo.com for more information.

Kenshoo is a trademark of Kenshoo Ltd. Other company and brand names may be trademarks of their respective owners.