• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, July 16, 2014

Adobe released a Q2 2014 search report Wednesday ahead of Google's second-quarter earnings suggesting marketers they serve in the U.S. spent about 9% more on search ads, compared with the year-ago quarter. The company estimates that spend for the year will increase up to 12%, among its clients.

The analysis of the U.S., the U.K. and German markets, based on more than 200 billion search impressions worth roughly $2 billion from more than 500 Adobe Marketing Cloud clients, shows the cost-per-click (CPC) rose 4% on Google and 6% down on Bing.

Overall, Adobe has seen 9% growth in the U.S. for search ad spend, 10% in the U.K. and 6% in Germany.

Google now represents 78% of the amount brands spend in search advertising in the U.S., while the Bing Yahoo network holds 22%, per Sid Shah, director of business analytics for advertising solutions at Adobe.

Marketers are spending less on paid search ads for the desktop, allocating more toward smartphones. Desktops now represent 70% of paid search spend, down from 77% in August 2013. Mobile and smartphones account for 30%, per Shah.

Adobe's clients helped the Yahoo Bing network increase its U.K. market share to 8.8%, but the network doesn't have much of a presence in Germany, where Google owns 96% of the search ad market.

Mobile adoption in the U.K. has outpaced the U.S. at 64%, with desktops accounting for 56% of all paid search spend. Tablets account for one-quarter of all search spend and mobile rose to nearly 20%, up from 11% ten months earlier.

"We've seen an acceleration of mobile ad spend in the past 12 months," he said, pointing to the Enhanced Campaign roll-out as one reason for the move. "It doesn't surprise me to see in the U.S. 40% of paid search spend to go toward smartphone and tablets," he said.

Google PLAs have stabilized to about 15% of search ad spend among retail advertisers. During the past year, brands have seen a major transition to Google Enhanced Campaigns. CPCs have remained stable, and the percentage marketers are spending on ads running across smartphones and tablets continues to increase.