Report: PPC Budgets Experience Unexpected Surge in 2015

New research shows that although industry leaders didn’t plan on increasing their pay-per-click (PPC) budgets this year, the majority of them have done so. “The State of PPC” report released by Hanapin Marketing has revealed that more than 70 percent have increased their PPC budgets in 2015, compared to 10 percent who said they had strategically planned to do so entering the year.

Over the past year, 78 percent claim they’ve felt “really good” about their PPC success. Furthermore, 60 percent stated that they feel “better” about the PPC market than they did in 2014. Next year, 48 percent intend to increase their PPC budgets.

“As the mix of PPC channels continues to expand, text ads, remarketing, and mobile ads remain the most proven channels,” wrote the authors of the report. “However, shopping, social ads, programmatic, and native ads are steadily growing in popularity and becoming more important to a business’ marketing mix.”

Within the next 12 months, the majority (75 percent) stated that they will be increasing their mobile budgets. About 74 percent said the same about their Google Adwords budgets.

Budgeting for Digital Marketing Initiatives

Heading into 2016 and beyond, research indicates that marketers are looking to invest more in some tactics than others. A report published by PulsePoint and Digiday has found that by 2017, about 59 percent intend to shift more of their budgets toward content marketing.

At the moment, 60 percent view content marketing as “very significant” to their strategies. However, it is not the only tactic that is on the rise. Almost 20 percent said they expect their search budgets to increase by 2017, while 46 percent claimed the same about native advertising.