Chris "Coz" Costello
Senior Director of Marketing Research @ Skai
Spending and Pricing Trends Across Paid Search, Social Advertising, and Retail Media
The beginning of the fourth quarter of 2023 was broadly positive for the primary walled garden channels in digital advertising. Retail media (+14%) and paid social (+8%) both saw increasing spend in October, while a plurality of paid search accounts grew even as overall spending was somewhat flat.
A 7% dip in paid search cost per click (CPC) was a big reason why search spending did not follow the other channels in the spend column, and paid social spending was up even as cost per thousand impressions (CPM) dropped. Retail media CPC was up, buoyed in part by the Amazon Prime Day event in the month.
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 Industry Snapshot – October 2023
Methodology: For these benchmarks, only Skai accounts with spend above a minimum threshold for the previous three months are included. Please note that the selection criteria used here are different from the Skai Quarterly Trends Report, and subsequently may not be consistent with those results in all cases.
How to read these charts
Accounts are divided into segments based on increases or decreases of at least 5% in monthly spend 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 spend. 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, while bubbles below the diagonal mean that volume grew slower.
Paid Search
Overall paid search spending decreased 1% in October, while average CPC dropped 7%. Average spending per day dipped 4%.
- 38% of search accounts spent more in October than September compared to 32% who spent less, and the average price of a click increased for 40% of accounts and decreased for 28%, 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 20% 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 increased 8% in October, while average CPM decreased 3%. Average spending per day rose 4%.
48% of social accounts spent more in October than September compared to 37% who spent less, and the average price of one thousand impressions increased for 37% of accounts and decreased for 39%, 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 spend increased but CPM decreased, which comprised 18% of all paid social accounts in the analysis. Another 35% showed no change in either spending levels OR the price per thousand impressions.
Retail Media
Overall, retail media spending grew 14% in October, while average CPC increased 3%. Average spending per day rose 11%.
61% of retail media accounts spent more in October than September compared to 25% who spent less, and the average price of a click increased for 44% of accounts and decreased for 25%, 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 34% of all retail media accounts in the analysis. Another 39% 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 Breakthrough and the Skai Research Center for ongoing insights, analysis, and interviews on all things related to digital advertising.
