Spending and Pricing Trends Across Paid Search, Social Advertising, and Retail Media
With the seasonal injection of spending from the “Cyber 5” in the rearview mirror, spending levels across all major digital channels declined in December. More than half of Skai accounts in paid search, paid social, and retail media spent less in the last month of the year compared to November. In total, paid social spending saw the biggest drop, with aggregate spending down 37% versus last month.
One major factor for the social dip was a decrease in CPM of 22%. Price premiums tend to recede after periods of high purchase intent, but this change was of a much greater magnitude than either paid search or retail media, where CPC fell by 9% and 5%, respectively.
How do you measure up? Check out these benchmarks to see if your programs are on par with your industry peers, ahead, or behind the curve.
This is a continuation of our monthly paid media snapshot series. As with any benchmark, your mileage may vary, but we hope this provides a bit more context for you as a marketer as you navigate the ups and downs of your program’s performance.
Monthly Industry Snapshot – December 2023
Methodology: Only Skai accounts with spend above a minimum threshold for the previous three months are included in these benchmarks. Please note that the selection criteria used here differ from the Skai Quarterly Trends Report and may not be consistent with those results in all cases. Starting in November 2023, paid social data has been expanded to include Meta, Pinterest, TikTok, LinkedIn, and YouTube.
How to read these charts
Accounts are divided into segments based on increases or decreases of at least 5% in monthly spending and CPC for retail media and paid search or CPM for paid social. Those segments are then plotted on a bubble chart where the x-axis represents the month-over-month (MoM) percent change in pricing for that segment, and the y-axis is the MoM percent change in total spending. Bubble size represents the percent of total Skai accounts.
The diagonal line indicates spending changes that are completely described by the change in pricing. Bubbles above the diagonal mean that ad volume—click for retail media and paid search, impressions for paid social—grew faster than pricing. In contrast, bubbles below the diagonal mean that volume grew slower.
Paid Search
Overall paid search spending decreased by 19% in December, while average CPC dropped by 9%. Average spending per day dipped 21%.
- 24% of search accounts spent more in December than in November compared to 56% who spent less, and the average price of a click increased for 24% of accounts and decreased by 56%, with the remaining share for each metric seeing no change.
- Of the segments that showed movement in both spending and pricing, the largest was where both spending and CPC decreased, which comprised 40% of all paid search accounts in the analysis. Another 35% showed no change in either spending levels OR the price per click.
Social Advertising
Overall, paid social spending dropped 37% in December, while average CPM decreased 22%. Average spending per day dipped 39%.
- 30% of social accounts spent more in December than in November compared to 54% who spent less, and the average price of one thousand impressions increased for 21% of accounts and decreased for 56%, with the remaining share for each metric seeing no change.
- Of the segments that showed movement in both spending and pricing, the largest was where both spending and CPM decreased, which comprised 30% of all paid social accounts in the analysis. Another 34% showed no change in either spending levels OR the price per thousand impressions.
Retail Media
Overall, retail media spending decreased 14% in December, while average CPC dropped 5%. Average spending per day dipped 16%.
- 25% of retail media accounts spent more in December than in November, compared to 60% who spent less, and the average price of a click increased for 28% of accounts and decreased for 40%, with the remaining share for each metric seeing no change.
- Of the segments that showed movement in both spending and pricing, the largest was where both spending and CPC decreased, which comprised 32% of all retail media accounts in the analysis. Another 40% showed no change in either spending levels OR the price per click.
Check out more resources from Skai
Come back next month for the most up-to-date data. Until then, you can dive into more of our research via our Quarterly Trends Reports hub.
Please visit The Breakthrough and the Skai Research Center for ongoing insights, analysis, and interviews on all things related to digital advertising.
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