Spending and Pricing Trends Across Paid Search, Social Advertising, and Retail Media
Increases in overall spending for retail media and paid search were mostly driven by the longer month of May, as the average daily spend was only 1-2 percentage points higher in both channels. Social spending was flat overall but down as a daily average.
Paid search saw the biggest change in ad prices, with CPC up 8% over April. Both retail media CPC and paid social CPM were within one percent of last month.
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.
Monthly Industry Snapshot – May 2024
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.
Retail Media
Retail media spending grew 6% in May, while average CPC increased 1%. Average spending per day rose 2%.
- 49% of retail media accounts spent more in May than in April, compared to 27% who spent less. The average price of a click increased for 38% of accounts and decreased for 20%, 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, comprising 26% of all retail media accounts in the analysis. Another 51% showed no change in either spending levels OR the price per click.
Paid Search
Total paid search spending grew 5% in May, while average CPC increased 8%. Average spending per day rose by 1%.
- 41% of search accounts spent more in May than in April compared to 26% who spent less, and the average price of a click increased for 51% of accounts and decreased for 21%, 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 CPC increased, which comprised 28% of all paid search accounts in the analysis. Another 49% showed no change in either spending levels OR the price per click.
Social Advertising
Overall, paid social spending stayed level in May, while average CPM decreased 1%. Average spending per day dipped 3%.
- 51% of social accounts spent more in May than April compared to 37% who spent less, and the average price of one thousand impressions increased for 54% of accounts and decreased for 31%, 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 31% of all paid social accounts in the analysis. Another 24% showed no change in either spending levels OR the price per thousand impressions.
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.
