This is more than twice the growth rate from a year ago. The study tracked the 550bn impressions, 9.5bn clicks and $5.5bn in advertiser spend put through the firm’s suite.

The key driver of this growth was mobile, with adspend on smartphones and tablets rising 167% year-on-year to account for 63% of all paid social spend. This is up from 51% last year. Mobile also accounted for 38% of paid search spending, up from 31% last year.

“Both paid search and social are showing healthy increases in spend and clicks with social obviously showing the much faster growth as it’s a far younger market,” said Rob Coyne, Kenshoo’s managing director for EMEA.

“Existing social advertisers are ramping up spend and getting better results in terms of click volumes despite fewer available impressions, while new social advertisers are also entering the market.

“Mobile has been the key driver of growth in both search and social, with 36% of revenue from advertiser sales now coming from mobile phones, up from 16% last year.”

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