Monthly Paid Media Spend Snapshot – July 2023

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

The most significant movement from June to July came in Retail Media, where Amazon Prime Day propelled retail media spending higher for 2 out of 3 Skai accounts and CPC higher for nearly half of the accounts.

Spending on paid search and social advertising dipped slightly, down 3% and 5% compared to last month, respectively. Social CPM only dropped by 1% as price trends continued to level out in that channel.

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 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 2023

Methodology: Only Skai accounts with spend above a minimum threshold for the previous three months are included for these benchmarks. Starting with the January 2023 release, spending benchmarks will again use total monthly spending to ensure consistency across chart segments. Please note that the selection criteria used here differ from the Skai Quarterly Trends Report and as a result, may not be consistent with those results in all cases.

How to read these charts.

Accounts are divided into four 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 thoroughly 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.

Paid Search 

Overall paid search spending decreased by 3% in July, while average CPC dropped by 4%. Average spending per day dipped by 6%.

• 35% of search accounts spent more in July than in June compared to 35% who spent less, and the average price of a click increased for 30% of accounts and decreased for 40%, with the remaining share for each metric seeing no change.
• Of the segments that showed movement in spending and pricing, the largest was where both spending and CPC decreased, which comprised 22% of all paid search accounts in the analysis. Another 47% showed no change in either spending levels OR the price per click.

Social Advertising

Overall, paid social spending dropped 5% in July, while average CPM decreased 1%. Average spending per day dipped by 8%.

• 42% of social accounts spent more in July than June compared to 39% who spent less, and the average price of one thousand impressions increased for 30% of accounts and decreased for 52%, with the remaining share for each metric seeing no change.
• Of the segments that showed movement in spending and pricing, the largest was where spending and CPM decreased, which comprised 23% of all paid social accounts in the analysis. Another 32% showed no change in either spending levels OR the price per thousand impressions.

Retail Media 

Retail media spending grew 16% in July, while average CPC increased 9%. Average spending per day rose 12%.

• 66% of retail media accounts spent more in July than June compared to 23% who spent less, and the average price of a click increased for 46% of accounts and decreased for 22%, with the remaining share for each metric seeing no change.
• Of the segments that showed movement in spending and pricing, the largest was where both spending and CPC increased, which comprised 38% of all retail media accounts in the analysis. Another 37% 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.

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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