Chris "Coz" Costello
Senior Director of Marketing Research @ Skai
Chris "Coz" Costello
Senior Director of Marketing Research @ Skai
February spending was lower than January across all channels, but only because February had two fewer days than the previous month. When we look at average daily spend, there wasn’t more than a one percent change in either direction.
Ad prices showed modest month-over-month increases in retail media and paid social but dipped slightly in paid search. Paid social advertisers whose spending and CPM went down in February still saw a CPM increase in aggregate, indicating a wide range of actual CPM values across a small number of advertisers in that category.
How do you measure up? Check out these benchmarks to see if your programs are on par with your industry peers, ahead of the curve, 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.
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—clicks 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.
Overall paid search spending decreased by 7% in February, while average CPC dropped by 2%. Average spending per day dipped 1%.
Overall, paid social spending dropped 8% in February, while average CPM grew 5%. Average spending per day dipped 1%.
Overall, retail media spending decreased 5% in February, while average CPC increased 4%. Average spending per day rose 1%.
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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