Desktop search spending to fall this year as mobile grows

NEW YORK, USA: The money spent by advertisers on the desktop will decline this year as people continue to reach for their smartphones to search for information, according to new data from eMarketer.

In the US, desktop search spending will drop by $1.4 billion in 2014, a decrease of more than 9 percent from last year, while mobile search will increase by more than 82 percent, the market research company said in a report published Thursday.

The figures show that desktop search advertising is still a more lucrative business than mobile search ads, but mobile devices are helping to upend those trends. Mobile search will total roughly $9 billion this year, compared with more than $13 billion for desktop search.

Overall, desktop advertising spending will decline by roughly 2 percent in 2014 to approximately $32 billion, eMarketer said. Just last year, desktop ads grew by roughly 2 percent.

Google has over the past year released new advertising tools designed to help advertisers maximize the effectiveness of their campaigns across platforms. The company's Enhanced Campaigns program lets marketers manage their ads in a single campaign on desktop and mobile. And, in a nod to mobile, the program allows marketers to tie bidding on those ads to people's geographic location.

Google faces challenges, however, in keeping its users engaged on mobile devices, where consumers tend to jump between different apps, which sometimes offer their own search tools. Still, eMarketer said mobile search revenues will comprise a larger slice of the company's total search revenues in 2014.