Digital Marketing Snapshot

Skai Quarterly Trends Infographic

Ad prices drove spending higher across digital marketing channels in Q2, led by retail media

Higher prices could be the cause or a symptom of lower impression and click growth in what has been a persistent cycle going back several years
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW
FOCUS ON COMMERCE
CORE TRENDS
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW
Spending increased both year-over-year (YoY) and quarter-over-quarter (QoQ) in all channels.
The share of Skai accounts increasing budgets over Q2 of last year in each channel mirrors overall spending growth, with retail media leading the pack.
In each channel, increased ad prices played a larger role in spending growth than increased ad volume.
Surveying over four years of Skai trend reports, YoY price changes have been remarkably similar across channels, and are typically accompanied by an opposite change in clicks or impressions.
SPENDING CONTINUES POSITIVE TREND
Spending increased both year-over-year (YoY) and quarter-over-quarter (QoQ) in all channels.
MORE THAN HALF OF ADVERTISERS IN EACH CHANNEL INCREASED SPENDING YOY
The share of Skai accounts increasing budgets over Q2 of last year in each channel mirrors overall spending growth, with retail media leading the pack.
AD PRICES MOVE THE NEEDLE
In each channel, increased ad prices played a larger role in spending growth than increased ad volume.
PRICE CHANGES IN HISTORICAL CONTEXT
Surveying over four years of Skai trend reports, YoY price changes have been remarkably similar across channels, and are typically accompanied by an opposite change in clicks or impressions.
FOCUS ON COMMERCE

COMMERCE MEDIA DRIVES QUARTERLY GROWTH IN SEARCH, SOCIAL

Across Google and Meta, shopping formats and objectives grew faster than the overall channel.

STANDARD SHOPPING HOLDS FAST IN PAID SEARCH

Even as Performance Max continues to gain share, plain old standard shopping campaigns have kept a consistent footprint within the paid search ecosystem.

RETAIL MEDIA CONVERSIONS KEEP PACE WITH SPENDING INCREASES

When we zoom in on Amazon, we can see that conversion rate has kept pace with click prices, which means fewer clicks are needed to drive conversion growth.
CORE TRENDS

Retail Media Trends

Spending growth for Retail Media was still the highest of our three key channels at +21% YoY, as nearly two-thirds of accounts showed increased investment levels.
Click growth from Amazon has slowed down since Q3 of last year, which means rising click prices had to carry most of the spending increase.
Impressions
QoQ
+7%
YoY
+17%
Clicks
QoQ
+2%
YoY
+9%
Spending
QoQ
+9%
YoY
+21%
CTR
QoQ
-3%
YoY
-5%
CPC
QoQ
+7%
YoY
+11%

Search Trends

Spending on paid search grew 6% over last year, the same rate of growth as last quarter.
Performance Max campaigns more than doubled YoY as the new algorithmic campaigns have almost completely replaced Smart Shopping.
Impressions
QoQ
-2%
YoY
-2%
Clicks
QoQ
-0%
YoY
-2%
Spending
QoQ
+5%
YoY
+6%
CTR
QoQ
+2%
YoY
0%
CPC
QoQ
+5%
YoY
+9%

Social Trends

The overall paid social channel increased spend 13% YoY with Meta growing 9%.
On Meta, CPMs rose YoY while impression volume dropped, reflecting a new phase of optimization and competition now that new campaign objectives are fully in place.
NOTE: As of Q4 2023, paid social analysis has expanded to include TikTok, YouTube and LinkedIn. Snap was added in Q1 2024.
Impressions
QoQ
-5%
YoY
+4%
Clicks
QoQ
+1%
YoY
+9%
Spending
QoQ
+1%
YoY
+13%
CTR
QoQ
+5%
YoY
+3%
CPM
QoQ
+6%
YoY
+8%

View reports from previous quarters:

Methodology

Analysis is drawn from a population of approximately $8.6 billion in advertising spend over five quarters, comprising more than 3,000 advertiser and agency accounts across 40 vertical industries and more than 150 countries running on the Skai™ platform on Google, Microsoft, Baidu, Yahoo! Japan, Amazon, Walmart, Instacart, Criteo, Kroger, Apple Search Ads, Pinterest, Snapchat, Facebook and Instagram.

Except where noted, analysis is based on Skai advertisers with 15 consecutive months of performance data. Some additional outliers have been excluded. Ad spending and pricing have been translated to USD at the time the spending was incurred.

For charts showing impressions, clicks and spending, volume metrics have been normalized to a factor of 1 based on the initial volume for the first quarter of data. Data points from subsequent quarters are based on a multiplier from the first quarter. For example, 1.6 means that volume is 60% greater than volume on the initial quarter measured.

Note: There may be variation in numbers for past or future research published by Skai as the rolling data set is dynamic for each new quarter.