Monthly Paid Media Spend Snapshot – July 2022

Spending and Pricing Trends Across Paid Search, Social Advertising, and Retail Media

The Amazon Prime Day sales event helped drive average daily spending for the Retail Media channel up in July for nearly half of retail media advertisers compared to June. Overall spending increased 10% as a result.

Search and social advertisers were more likely to see a decrease in spending, with only about a quarter of advertisers seeing their budgets go up. In both of these channels, unit pricing was also generally down, which contributed to the spending declines.

How do you measure up? Check out these benchmarks to see if your programs are on par with your industry peers or if you’re 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 Paid Media Spend Snapshot – July 2022

Methodology: For these benchmarks, only Skai accounts with spend above a minimum threshold for the previous three months are included. As of April 2022, spending benchmarks use average daily spend to control for longer and shorter months. Please note that the selection criteria used here are different from the Skai Quarterly Trends Report, which can sometimes lead to different results from the two analyses.

Paid Search spending

Overall, average daily spending in paid search dropped 5% from June to July.

• 25% of paid search accounts spent +10% or more per day in July versus June, compared to 44% who spent -10% or less (-19% differential)
• 5% of accounts spent +50% or more per day in July versus June, compared to 5% of accounts spending -50% or less (zero differential)

Paid Search CPCs

Overall, the average cost of a click in paid search advertising decreased 3% from June to July.

• 21% of paid search accounts paid +10% or more per click in July versus June, compared to 35% who paid -10% or less (-14% differential)
• 3% of accounts paid +50% or more per click in July versus June, compared to 2% of accounts paying -50% or less (+1% differential)

Social Advertising spending

Overall, average daily spending in social advertising dropped 11% from June to July.

• 28% of paid social accounts spent +10% or more per day in July versus June, compared to 50% who spent -10% or less (-22% differential)
• 8% of accounts spent +50% or more per day in July versus June, compared to 15% of accounts spending -50% or less (-7% differential)

Social Advertising CPMs

Overall, the average cost of a thousand impressions in social advertising decreased 7% from June to July.

• 12% of paid social accounts paid +10% or more per thousand impressions in July versus June, compared to 60% who paid -10% or less (-48% differential)
• 3% of accounts paid +50% or more per thousand impressions in July versus June, compared to 3% of accounts paying -50% or less (% differential)

Retail Media spending

Overall, average daily spending in retail media advertising increased 10% from June to July.

• 48% of retail media advertising accounts spent +10% or more per day in July versus June, compared to 29% who spent -10% or less (+19% differential)
• 18% of accounts spent +50% or more per day in July versus June, compared to 5% of accounts spending -50% or less (+13% differential)

Retail Media CPCs

Overall, the average cost of a click in retail media advertising rose 4% from June to July.

• 35% of retail media advertising accounts paid +10% or more per click in July versus June, compared to 23% who paid -10% or less (+12% differential)
• 3% of accounts paid +50% or more per click in July compared to June, versus 0% of accounts paying -50% or less (+3% differential)

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.

And please visit the Skai blog and Research & Reports page for ongoing insights, analysis, and interviews on all things related to digital advertising.

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