• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, March 1, 2016

adMarketplace, Apple, Bing, Facebook, Google, Instagram, and Yahoo, among others, hold a place in cross-channel campaigns -- but marketers still need to learn how to tie together the media similar to the way they learned to link desktop and mobile advertising. Consumer behavior and advancements by brands continue to challenge this trend.

Search visits per person rose nearly 50% from a year ago, but each takes less time to find the answers, according to a study released Tuesday. The time spent searching on engines has grown, but there has been a 17% drop in the average time for each search session.

While less time on a search engine means fewer moments with advertisements, it also means that brands are doing a better job of providing information through advertisements or content to those searching for answers. Search engines reach 67% of the U.S. population and 98% of the U.S. browsing population, but pages per visit continue to fall. In fact, pages per visit dropped 8% since last year, according to Millward Brown Digital.

Leveraging the Compete behavioral clickstream panel of more than 2 million, the findings analyze trends impacting search. Findings from the State of Search report suggest that marketers continue to invest in search engine marketing. Most market categories continue to rise. Since 2013, paid-search referrals to the Apparel category rose by more than 50% for most major brands, resulting in 67% growth for the category in the past two years.

Numbers published in the report suggest that product listing ads (PLAs) play an important role, driving more traffic to sites than paid-search ads. In the footwear market, PLA referral terms drove 22.5% of traffic to ShoeBuy vs. 2.2% from paid search ads or for Walmart 11.8% vs. 1.9%, respectively.

The study also emphasizes the importance of organic listings and social media. Millward Brown says non-branded keywords indicate purchase traffic volume and understating the keywords that drive traffic can help guide a brand's content strategy.

REI, for example, uses the non-branded keyword phrase "camping checklist" to generate tons of traffic. By understanding the target consumers and the topics that are relevant to them, and then ensuring that this content is a top search result, REI demonstrates how search and content work together.

For REI the term camping checklist generates about 39% of traffic, but for lovetheoutdoors.com the volume of traffic drops to 10%, and for google.com to 5%, and reddit.com it slides further to 4%.

The study did not explore display advertising, but marketers should not omit display and video in their strategies.