A Kantar Media company and leading provider of Search Marketing Intelligence – AdGooroo’s latest research report examines Paid Search advertising by the apparel industry in the United Kingdom. The exercise particularly looked at Desktop Text Ad activity on the top 2,288 apparel keywords on Google.co.uk, ranked by total ad spend. Mobile search and Product Listing Ads were not included in the study, AdGooroo said on its website. From January through July 2015, UK advertisers spent a total £41.2 million ($62 million) sponsoring the keyword group – a 23 per cent increase over the same period in 2014, when they spent £33.6 million ($51 million). According to the report, the increase in the apparel industry’s Paid Search spend from January to July 2015 runs counter to the overall trend AdGooroo found across all UK Paid Search, which was down nearly 11 per cent during this time period. UK advertisers spent a total of £773 million ($1173 million) on Desktop Text Ads from January through July 2015 compared to £867 million ($1315 million) spent during the same time in 2014. Average cost per click and clickthrough rate for the apparel keyword group increased in 2015 as well, though not as dramatically as ad spend. Apparel advertisers paid an average of £0.32 ($0.49) per click for the keyword group in the first seven months of 2015 vs. £0.30 ($0.46) during the same time in 2014, and experienced a 4.62 per cent average clickthrough rate compared to 4.42 per cent last year. For a comparison with the US market, US Desktop Text Ad spend on the top 2,288 Apparel keywords in the US totaled $289 million or around £189 million from January to July 2015. The average cost per click was $1.28 or £0.59 while the average clickthrough rate was 4.19 per cent. Although the majority of sites in the Top 20 ranking are British companies, US-based Amazon tops the list with £1,586,000 ($2,405,882) spent on the apparel keyword group in the first 7 months of 2015. Boden (£1,095,000 or $1,661,060) and Nike (£1,041,000 or $1,579,144) earned the second and third spots respectively, followed by John Lewis (£976,000 or $1,480,543) and Asos (£885,000 or $1,342,500), who round out the Top 5. The majority of sites in the Top 20 are omnichannel retailers, having physical stores and, in some cases, catalogues, in addition to a retail website. Notable among these are three stores that originated in the 19th century but appear to be adapting just fine to the Internet era – John Lewis, Marks & Spencer and House of Fraser.
