Monthly Paid Media Spend Snapshot

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Chris "Coz" Costello
Senior Director of Marketing Research @ Skai

June 05, 2023

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

April showers brought more spending in search and retail media in May, with total expenditures up 6% in both channels. Much of this increase was from higher ad prices, with CPC up 5% for search and 6% for retail media.

Paid social ad spending was down 1% in May, although CPM did regain some of the ground it lost last month, rising by 6%.

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 – May 2023

Methodology: For these benchmarks, only Skai accounts with spend above a minimum threshold for the previous three months are included. Starting with the January 2023 release, spending benchmarks will once again use total monthly spend to ensure consistency across chart segments. Please note that the selection criteria used here are different 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.

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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, while bubbles below the diagonal mean that volume grew slower.

Paid Search

Overall paid search spending grew 6% in May, while average CPC increased 5%. Average spending per day rose 3%.

45% of search accounts spent more in May than April compared to 30% who spent less, and the average price of a click increased for 48% of accounts and decreased for 22%, 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 spend and CPC increased, which comprised 30% of all paid search accounts in the analysis. Another 42% showed no change in either spending levels OR the price per click.

Bubble chart titled May 2023 Snapshot: Paid Search offers a monthly paid media snapshot, showing MoM Spend % Change vs. MoM CPC % Change. Bubbles represent categories like Spend DOWN CPC DOWN, with varying sizes and clearly labeled axes.

Social Advertising

Overall, paid social spending dropped 1% in May, while average CPM grew 6%. Average spending per day dipped 4%.

48% of social accounts spent more in May than April compared to 34% who spent less, and the average price of one thousand impressions increased for 41% of accounts and decreased for 36%, 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 spend and CPM increased, which comprised 22% of all paid social accounts in the analysis. Another 39% showed no change in either spending levels OR the price per thousand impressions.

Bubble chart titled May 2023 Snapshot: Paid Social presents a monthly paid media snapshot, showing MoM Spend % Change vs. MoM CPM % Change. The largest bubble, labeled TOTAL PAID SOCIAL, highlights overall trends in spend and CPM.

Retail Media

Overall, retail media spending grew 7% in May, while average CPC increased 6%. Average spending per day rose 4%.

49% of retail media accounts spent more in May than April compared to 28% who spent less, and the average price of a click increased for 48% of accounts and decreased for 21%, 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 spend and CPC increased, which comprised 31% of all retail media accounts in the analysis. Another 44% 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.