Key Takeaways from Skai’s Q2 2025 Digital Advertising Trends Report

By looking at the solid results from Q2 2025, it would appear digital advertisers weren’t as concerned with the economic uncertainty as many would have thought. Despite tariff announcements, inflation concerns, and broader market volatility, the digital advertising ecosystem showed remarkable resilience and continued growth.

The Q2 2025 Quarterly Trends Report (QTR) represents our comprehensive analysis of digital advertising performance across all major channels and platforms during the second quarter of 2025.

For more than fifteen years and sixty+ quarterly reports, this industry benchmarking analysis exists to provide marketers, agencies, and brands with actionable intelligence about the rapidly evolving advertising landscape, helping them make informed decisions about budget allocation, channel strategy, and technology adoption. The QTR synthesizes data from multiple industry sources, platform performance metrics, and real-world campaign results to deliver insights that matter most to performance-focused marketers.

Here are the five most critical trends that defined Q2 2025 and what they mean for marketers heading into the second half of the year.

Download the full Q2 2025 Quarterly Trends Report now

Commerce media proves recession-proof as growth accelerates past traditional channels

Retail media’s 18% spend growth paired with 16% click growth and 9% CTR improvement shows the channel is scaling efficiently while maintaining engagement quality.

Retail media demonstrated its staying power in Q2 2025, showing consistent growth patterns that remained largely unaffected by economic headwinds. The data reveals retail media spend climbed another 18% year-over-year, with clicks growing 16% and click-through rates improving 9%. This parallel growth suggests marketers are scaling in step with real engagement rather than speculatively bidding up inventory.

Retail media’s six-year growth trajectory shows controlled expansion with spend and clicks climbing steadily without breaking apart

The stability comes from retail media’s unique value proposition as the connective tissue between channels. By anchoring advertising around retailer destinations where transactions actually happen, it created a natural hub for campaign integration. This allows search and social efforts to drive directly to the point of sale, streamlining the customer journey and enabling cross-channel coordination that once felt out of reach.

What once looked like a linear funnel is now a continuous loop, with brands seeing success by being present throughout that cycle: capturing interest through paid search, influencing through social, and converting through retail media. That level of integration isn’t just a strategic edge anymore; it’s table stakes – it’s commerce media.

Retail media hits efficiency sweet spot with stable costs and soaring performance

With CPCs holding steady at just 2% YoY growth while spend jumped 18% and engagement improved 9%, retail media has reached a maturity level that delivers both scale and efficiency.

Q2 2025 revealed the maturation of retail media as an advertising channel, with efficiency metrics that demonstrate sophisticated scaling. The three key metrics tell the story: 18% spend growth, 16% click growth, and 9% improvement in click-through rates. When spend grows faster than clicks but engagement still improves, it suggests marketers are achieving better quality scale rather than just buying more inventory.

The efficiency story becomes even more compelling when examining the underlying dynamics. Click-through rates rose while impression growth lagged behind both clicks and spend, indicating stronger engagement without simply buying broader reach. CPCs held steady with just a 2% year-over-year increase, confirming that the 18% spend increase came primarily from higher click volumes rather than cost inflation.

CPC stability (+2% YoY) combined with CTR growth (+9% YoY) demonstrates retail media’s maturing efficiency

Platform diversification created new opportunities, with Walmart and other retail media networks outpacing Amazon in both spend and click growth this quarter, offering lower CPCs and added efficiency. This variation creates opportunities for marketers to test approaches based on specific goals and current mix.

Amazon DSP finds its groove

Amazon DSP’s climb to over 20% of total Amazon investment signals that existing advertisers are scaling programmatic strategies for full-funnel reach beyond traditional performance targeting.

Amazon’s Demand-Side Platform showed remarkable growth in Q2 2025, with DSP spend reaching its highest share yet, climbing to over 20% of total Amazon investment while account adoption remained steady at 48%. This suggests that existing advertisers are increasing their DSP investment, potentially to support broader upper- and mid-funnel strategies.

Amazon DSP spend reached over 20% of total Amazon investment, with account adoption steady at 48%

Amazon spend rose 15% year-over-year in Q2 2025, with clicks and conversions growing more slowly. That mix – higher spend, lower conversion rate – suggests marketers are prioritizing visibility and upper-funnel influence, not just bottom-line efficiency. It points to a more balanced, multi-stage approach on Amazon rather than pure performance targeting.

Rather than treating DSP as a secondary format, marketers appear to be exploring how it can drive incremental reach and influence earlier in the customer journey both onsite and offsite. The data shows brands see Amazon as more than a point-of-sale platform; it’s a full-funnel engine for sophisticated, targeted campaigns.

Prime Day’s four-day experiment reveals new playbook for holiday success

The first four-day Prime Day delivered both record volume and efficiency gains, with CPCs dropping 10.4% while CTRs improved 33.3%, proving that strategic preparation can overcome competitive pressures during peak demand periods.

Prime Day 2025 made history as Amazon’s biggest Prime Day event ever and the first to span four full days, running from July 16-19. The results were significant across the retail landscape, with U.S. ecommerce sales hitting $24.1 billion during Prime Week (along with the other major sales events) a 30.3% year-over-year increase that represented 6.5% of all July online retail activity.

The efficiency breakthrough was remarkable: Prime Day 2025 achieved cost reduction (-10.4% CPCs) alongside engagement improvement (+33.3% CTRs). CPC fell to $1.80 (lowest in 3 years) while CTR rose to 0.32% (highest in 3 years). This pattern challenges traditional assumptions about high-traffic periods, where competition typically drives up costs.

Prime Day 2025 achieved -10.4% CPC reduction with +33.3% CTR improvement, reaching three-year efficiency highs

The volume lift of the daily average of the 30 days leading up to Prime Day versus the daily average of the four-day event demonstrates the power of synchronized demand events. Spend increased 198% while clicks grew 108%, impressions 114%, conversions 153%, and revenue 197%. These lifts show how marketers treated the ramp-up period before the shopping event, with strategic preparation and AI-enhanced optimization helping maintain efficiency even as demand surged.

Key insights for Q4 planning include the importance of budget pacing across extended promotional periods and the growing significance of efficiency gains during peak demand through better targeting and creative optimization.

AI transforms from marketing buzzword to essential daily toolkit

Celeste AI usage data shows marketers are integrating AI across the full campaign lifecycle rather than treating it as a specialized tool, with balanced adoption

Q2 2025 marked the quarter when AI transitioned from experimental to essential in digital advertising. Early usage data from Skai’s Celeste AI—the first GenAI marketing agent purpose-built for commerce media—offers a real-world snapshot of how marketers are integrating AI into their workflows.

Looking at how prompts break down, strategy and planning lead at 25%, followed by campaign setup and operations (20%) and performance and pacing insights (20%). Tasks tied to creative direction and platform troubleshooting account for 10% and 15%, respectively, with the remaining 10% covering brand- or product-specific questions.

Celeste AI usage shows balanced adoption across campaign lifecycle: 25% strategy/planning, 20% campaign setup, 20% performance insights

What stands out most is the balance: marketers aren’t leaning too heavily into any one use case. Instead, they’re spreading AI support across the campaign lifecycle, from upfront planning through execution and post-launch adjustments. AI isn’t being treated as a specialized tool for a specific phase, but as a companion across the full workflow.

The takeaway is clear: marketers are using AI wherever they can find efficiency gains or competitive advantages. As confidence builds, we may see deeper specialization in how GenAI is used, but for now, breadth across the marketing workflow is the story.

Conclusion: Time to double down on what’s working

The data from Q2 2025 tells a compelling story: while economic uncertainty dominated headlines, digital advertisers who stayed focused on performance-driven channels and emerging technologies saw remarkable results. Retail media proved recession-proof with 18% growth rates, retail media achieved the efficiency sweet spot with CPC stability and CTR improvements, Amazon DSP allocations doubled as brands discovered programmatic’s potential, Prime Day’s extended format revealed new consumer behavior patterns and efficiency possibilities, and AI tools transformed daily operations from time-consuming tasks to instant insights.

This isn’t the time to play it safe – it’s the moment to double down on what’s working. The marketers who will dominate in Q4 and beyond are those who aggressively shift budgets toward commerce media (with its proven 18% growth trajectory), optimize their retail media operations for maximum efficiency, expand their programmatic reach through platforms like Amazon DSP, apply Prime Day learnings to extended holiday strategies with better efficiency planning, and integrate AI tools throughout their daily workflows. The competitive advantages are there for the taking, but only for marketers bold enough to embrace the data and act on these insights.

We hope you enjoyed these insights from our Q2 2025 analysis. You can download the full Quarterly Trends Report and explore more research and reports at Skai’s Research Hub to stay ahead of the evolving digital advertising landscape.

Download the full Q2 2025 Quarterly Trends Report now

Methodology: Unless otherwise noted, all data from the Q2 2025 report comes from over 1 trillion impressions, 8.2 billion clicks, and $8.7 billion of Skai platform activity across retail media, paid search, and paid social advertising in Q2 2025 (April 1–June 30). Data is aggregated and anonymized across Skai accounts, which include many of the world’s leading consumer brands and agencies. Year-over-year comparisons reflect the same date range in Q2 2024. Skai’s data set only includes advertisers that were active on the Skai platform for the full duration of both Q2 2024 and Q2 2025 to ensure consistency and comparability in trend analysis.