Black Friday, Cyber Monday sales from Google paid search up by double digits YoY

By most accounts, this year’s Black Friday to Cyber Monday stretch was another record-setter for e-commerce sales. The search team at Merkle shared with us some early top-line stats on how a sample of the agency’s retail accounts fared over the weekend.

The sample includes Google AdWords data from 50 of the top 500 retailers in the US, along with some smaller retailers.

Sales from Google paid search campaigns rose year over year by double digits on both Black Friday and Cyber Monday:

• Black Friday sales from paid search were up 21 percent year over year.
• Cyber Monday Google paid search sales rose 16 percent year over year.

Shopping campaigns (product listing ads) continue to play an increasing role in driving sales from search. Between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday, sales from Google Shopping campaigns rose 54 percent above last year, far outpacing text ads, says Merkle.

During that same stretch, phone sales also rose by 28 percent over last year, accounting for 26 percent of all Google paid search sales. Mark Ballard, Merkle VP of research, said that share of phone sales “was in line with expectations, which were to see some share gains compared to earlier in the quarter and earlier this year.”

About The Author

As Third Door Media’s paid media reporter, Ginny Marvin writes about paid online marketing topics including paid search, paid social, display and retargeting for Search Engine Land and Marketing Land. With more than 15 years of marketing experience, Ginny has held both in-house and agency management positions. She provides search marketing and demand generation advice for ecommerce companies and can be found on Twitter as @ginnymarvin.