Infographic: Digital Marketing Snapshot

Covid-19 clearly had an impact on the quarter, but year-over-year spending still grew across all channels through the end of March

January and February looked healthy, which served as a backstop to the spending decreases in the last month of the quarter. Since the initial hit, weekly spending has stabilized across multiple channels, and recovery will vary by industry category.
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW
PRODUCT AD SPOTLIGHT
CORE TRENDS
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW
Ecommerce Channel Advertising surged in Q1, riding a wave of increased activity in March as shoppers prepared for an enforced stay-at-home lifestyle
This category picked up across channels in March as households upleveled their electronics to better adjust to more time at home in both a professional and a personal capacity
Spending and click-through rate increased in March as online shoppers bought personal care items in large quantities, but the lower unit price of these items translated to lower CPCs
After an initial decline, total spending for both the paid search and paid social channels has leveled off and begun to grow into the middle of April
ECOMMERCE
Ecommerce Channel Advertising surged in Q1, riding a wave of increased activity in March as shoppers prepared for an enforced stay-at-home lifestyle
COVID-19 FOCUS: COMPUTERS & ELECTRONICS
This category picked up across channels in March as households upleveled their electronics to better adjust to more time at home in both a professional and a personal capacity
COVID-19 FOCUS: CPG
Spending and click-through rate increased in March as online shoppers bought personal care items in large quantities, but the lower unit price of these items translated to lower CPCs
COVID-19 FOCUS: EARLY VIEW OF Q2
After an initial decline, total spending for both the paid search and paid social channels has leveled off and begun to grow into the middle of April
Product Ad Spotlight

Product Ad Spotlight

Product ads comprised 38% of total Q1 spend for Shopping & Retail accounts in the social channel, and made up 44% of paid search spending in the same category
CORE TRENDS

Social Trends

    Spending on paid social ads grew 25% compared to the first quarter of last year
  • Skai estimates that spending growth without the impact of Covid-19 on social budgets would have been between 34% and 37%
  • Impressions continued to grow into Q1 from Q4 levels, even before increased usage of social media in mid- to late-March
Impressions
QoQ
+11%
YoY
+35%
Clicks
QoQ
-6%
YoY
+40%
Spending
QoQ
-18%
YoY
+25%
CTR
QoQ
-15%
YoY
+4%
CPM
QoQ
-26%
YoY
-7%

Search Trends

    Search volumes were up slightly for impressions, clicks and spending compared to the same period last year
  • Spending increased 1%, but Skai estimates growth would have been between 8% and 9% before the Covid-19 virus affected search budgets
  • Average cost-per-click decreased slightly year-over-year as the mix of search ads continued to shift towards mobile and product ads
Impressions
QoQ
-20%
YoY
+5%
Clicks
QoQ
-13%
YoY
+4%
Spending
QoQ
-19%
YoY
+1%
CTR
QoQ
+9%
YoY
-1%
CPC
QoQ
-7%
YoY
-3%

View reports from previous quarters:

Methodology

Analysis is drawn from a population of nearly $7B in advertising spend, comprising over 3,000 advertiser and agency accounts across 40 vertical industries and over 150 countries running on the Skai platform on Google, Microsoft, Baidu, Yandex, Yahoo! Japan, Verizon Media, Amazon, Walmart, Apple Search Ads, Pinterest, Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram and the Facebook Audience Network.

Except where noted, only advertisers with 15 consecutive months of performance data are included. Some additional outliers have been excluded. Contrary to previous reports, ad spending and pricing have been translated to USD at the time the spending was incurred, and do not use Ex-FX, or “constant currency” dollars.

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.