Industry KPIs: Small business ads outperform enterprises on phones

The news: US small businesses (SMBs) see higher clickthrough rates on smartphones than enterprise businesses, per our Industry KPI data via Taboola, indicating an opportunity for small marketers to effectively reach consumers and compete with larger companies.

• Organic clickthrough rates (CTRs) for SMB ads with publishers on tablets were 2.9%, while smartphones had CTRs of 2.8%. By comparison, enterprise businesses saw smartphone publisher organic CTRs of 2.7%.
• That’s a narrow gap, but enterprise businesses pulled significantly ahead on desktops and tablets: SMB organic CTRs for desktops and tablets were 1.8% and 2.9%, respectively, while enterprises saw organic CTRs of 2.7% and 3.2%.

The CTRs show the importance of cross-platform marketing for enterprise clients but also reveal that SMBs can capitalize on smartphone CTRs to drive engagement and make connections with consumers more effectively, as opposed to competing where enterprises reign supreme.

Breakdown by industry: Native display ads are the most common ad format that SMBs and enterprises have access to via publishers, but not all industries see the same CTRs.

• Taboola analyzed CTRs for five industries, and found that food and beverage display ads drove the highest organic CTRs at 0.3%, indicating that marketers in the sector have a unique advantage when using display ads.
• Technology and computers ranked second with organic CTRs of 0.22%, followed by personal finance (0.19%), beauty (0.18%), and style and fashion (0.16%). The relatively low performance for beauty, style, and fashion native display ads could be attributed to their incredibly competitive and saturated markets. Beauty and fashion also typically see higher engagement from social media and influencer marketing.

Our take: A 0.1% lead may not be enormous, but it’s still a lead. SMBs should leverage their advantage on smartphones to drive engagement and form more authentic relationships with consumers.

• But enterprises shouldn’t let up, either. High CTRs across devices mean ad budgets should be diversified in order to reach broader audiences. But for marketers in industries like beauty that struggle with native display ads, other channels may be worthy of larger commitments.

Go deeper: Interested in seeing more CTR benchmarks? Industry KPI subscribers can get get right to benchmarking performance against over 400+ industry benchmarks, see more here.