Last week (10 December), Marin Software Incorporated (NYSE: MRIN), released its Q3 2015 Performance Marketer’s Benchmark Report. An analysis of consumer behaviour in Q3 reveals that while smartphones have made gains across all three channels – search, display, and social – display ads have exploded in 2015.

Display – dominating Q3 mobile ads

Marin’s data highlights a huge growth in the display ad market. Click share for mobile devices hit almost 65%, with smartphones accounting for over 55% of all display ad clicks in Q3. This aligns with industry expectations, eMarketer recently found that display advertising is the fastest growing segment of mobile advertising¹. Year-over-year, Marin saw double-digit shifts in all metrics towards smartphone devices and the majority of Q3 display conversions happened on a mobile device.

Search – the next stage of desktop’s demise

For the first time ever, Marin’s QBR reveals that both tablet and desktop lost out to mobile in Q3 this year. Desktop suffered the largest loss of engagement across all devices. As predicted, consumers are very close to hitting the 50% mark for click share on mobile devices, with a 54%-46% desktop-mobile split. Advertising spend in Q3 closely mirrored this trend, with 42% of all spend going to ads for mobile.

Social – mobile reach and engagement remain high

As a mobile-first channel, social advertising shifted the least. Mobile devices continue to dominate when it comes to impressions and clicks, but lags on conversions, which stand at just 39% on mobile and 61% on desktop; however, this is an increase of 4.2% since last quarter.

Click-through rate (CTR) trends

Across the board, consumers are becoming increasingly comfortable with clicking through on mobile devices, with nearly twice as many clicks coming through mobiles than desktop. Equally, while more conversions are still made on desktops, the gap is narrowing considerably, and on display, smartphone and tablet ads surpassed desktop for the first time. Across devices, search ads are still dominant. This could be because when consumers see a display or social ad, their intent is not usually focused on products or services, but consumers are more likely to be in buying mode when they’re using a search engine.

Cost-per-click (CPC) behaves very differently than CTR. Desktop remains the most costly of all devices with, tablet following closely behind. Smartphone remains the cheapest option when looking at CPC by device.

Steph Carr, VP Marin Software EMEA commented: “Display advertising has made critical shifts over the past year to become a mobile-first ad channel. It’s also interesting to see such disparity between mobile spend, clicks and conversions for display ads. This significant gap suggests that there’s room to grow if savvy advertisers shift budget towards mobile devices.”

Carr continues: “My top tip for Christmas? Take advantage of the mobile reach and engagement that social platforms have, but don’t forget desktop and search will still give you a higher conversion rate. Mobile is having its ‘advertising moment’, but your media mix needs to be unique to your own objectives and needs, and driven by your first-party data.”