Infographic: Digital Marketing Snapshot

Key digital marketing channels continued overall growth trends after holiday spike

Social, search and ecommerce ad spending all increased year-over-year on a same-store basis, while newer properties like Pinterest and Apple Search Ads are gaining traction with marketers.
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW
MOBILE/PRODUCT SPOTLIGHT
CORE TRENDS
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW
As both the volume and the share of video ads has been growing, click-through rate (CTR) across all social ads has been declining
Mobile search volume is growing fast enough to offset declining CPC and still outpace overall search spending growth
On a same-advertiser basis, Ecommerce Channel Ads grew faster than both search and social
Across ALL advertisers, Pinterest clicks and spend increased 2X or more compared to last year
Since launching on Skai in Q3 2018, spending growth on Apple Search Ads has increased rapidly across all advertisers
Social
As both the volume and the share of video ads has been growing, click-through rate (CTR) across all social ads has been declining
Search
Mobile search volume is growing fast enough to offset declining CPC and still outpace overall search spending growth
Ecommerce
On a same-advertiser basis, Ecommerce Channel Ads grew faster than both search and social
Pinterest
Across ALL advertisers, Pinterest clicks and spend increased 2X or more compared to last year
Apple Search Ads
Since launching on Skai in Q3 2018, spending growth on Apple Search Ads has increased rapidly across all advertisers
MOBILE/PRODUCT SPOTLIGHT

Mobile Spotlight

Mobile ads continued to grow faster than their desktop counterparts across channels, comprising 84% of all social spending and 50% of all search spending in Q1

Product Spotlight

Search Shopping Campaigns and Social Dynamic Product Ads continue to grow YOY at similar rates, and both channels “landed” higher in Q1 than their investment levels in Q3, before the holiday spike
CORE TRENDS

Social Trends

  • Social spending grew 27% compared to Q1 of 2018, with faster growth in key segments like Instagram, video and mobile
  • More passive ad units such as video and the Stories format may be factors in the overall decline of clicks and click-through rate
Impressions
QoQ
+13%
YoY
+20%
Clicks
QoQ
-6%
YoY
-23%
Spending
QoQ
-11%
YoY
+27%
CTR
QoQ
-17%
YoY
-37%
CPM
QoQ
-21%
YoY
+6%

Search Trends

  • As the seasonal spending boost receded, search spending increased 11% over Q1 of 2018, and saw a small increase over pre-holiday levels in Q3
  • Mobile search ads continued to grow more than twice as fast as the overall average, across both keywords and shopping campaigns
Impressions
QoQ
-18%
YoY
+36%
Clicks
QoQ
-11%
YoY
+25%
Spending
QoQ
-16%
YoY
+11%
CTR
QoQ
+9%
YoY
-7%
CPC
QoQ
-6%
YoY
-11%

View reports from previous quarters:

Methodology

Except where noted, analysis is based on Skai advertisers with 15 consecutive months of performance data taken from a population of over 3,000 advertiser and agency accounts across 20 vertical industries and over 60 countries, spanning Google, Bing, Baidu, Yandex, Yahoo!, Yahoo! Japan, Pinterest, Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram and the Facebook Audience Network. Some outliers have been excluded. The resulting sample includes more than 600 billion impressions, 14 billion clicks and $6 billion (USD) in advertiser spending.

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.

Ad spending and CPC are measured using Ex-FX or “Constant Currency” adjustments, where results are based on native currency, and only translated to common currency after aggregation.

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.