Merkle’s Q1 Report was recently revealed and the results are telling us about trends that aren’t too surprising when we think about how the past trends have overtaken the industry.

• Google AdWords spending has increased
• Mobile spending has increased
• PLA ads continue to rise past text ads
• Local Inventory Ads continue to improve
• ETA results are mixed
• Bing and Yahoo Mobile results are dropping

Many of these trends are not surprising when you consider that they follow are pretty consistent pattern from the years before. Google AdWords Spending increased 21% in the past year from 19% in Quarter 4. Mobile spend has been steadily rising, up from 51% from the previous year, which is not surprising when you think about that nearly 60% of queries are from mobile devices. And we can’t necessarily expect that Bing and Yahoo fell by 14% especially with the rise of such an effective tool like Google AdWords helping small and large businesses alike to extend their brand.

So how can you make this judgment and draw actionable insights from the information being provided to you by these trends? It’s all about thinking about your goals, and whether the data being presented by them will help you accomplish those goals. If you know that Bing and Yahoo ads are dropping, it safe to assume that the search engines are flailing behind more effective engines like Google because of the features that AdWords provides—such as the IF Functionality, Ad Customizers, Display Search Ads among many other features—you may want to consider investing your time and money in those ads which will receive more recognition given the exposure that Google can give you. If PLA ads are rising past text ads, which accounted for over 50% of retail ad search clicks, then it may be that featuring a product image may be far more alluring to viewers than simple text, and so tailoring your ads to product and product categories may be more efficient than using keywords generate relevant search queries to your website. Whatever the situation may be, it’s important to consider how valuable these insights may be based on the goals you have, so that you can draw actionable insight and draw the type of revenue that you desire. So get started and learn more about these insights here.