Digital Marketing Snapshot

Digital marketers invested heavily in the fourth quarter, outpacing growth from previous quarters even in channels less affected by the pandemic.

The underlying factors for fourth quarter growth varied by channel, with pure volume pushing Ecommerce Channel Ads, increased engagement driving Paid Search, and higher ad prices affecting Social Advertising.
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW
SPOTLIGHT ON
CORE TRENDS
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW
October showed the biggest year-over-year (YoY) growth in the quarter across all channels.
The CPG-heavy categories of Beauty & Personal Care and Food & Groceries stood out as key drivers of year-over-year spending growth for Ecommerce Channel Ads.
Click-through rate (CTR) for non-shopping search ads increased 27% compared to Q4 of 2019, and those additional clicks largely drove the spending increase over that same period.
The shape of the spending trendline reflects that of social ad prices, particularly over the last six months. This suggests that those price fluctuations played a key role in social ad spending trends.
OCTOBER SETS THE TONE
October showed the biggest year-over-year (YoY) growth in the quarter across all channels.
CPG REIGNS IN ECOMMERCE
The CPG-heavy categories of Beauty & Personal Care and Food & Groceries stood out as key drivers of year-over-year spending growth for Ecommerce Channel Ads.
MORE ENGAGEMENT DRIVES MORE SEARCH SPENDING
Click-through rate (CTR) for non-shopping search ads increased 27% compared to Q4 of 2019, and those additional clicks largely drove the spending increase over that same period.
HIGHER PRICES AFFECT SOCIAL SPENDING GROWTH
The shape of the spending trendline reflects that of social ad prices, particularly over the last six months. This suggests that those price fluctuations played a key role in social ad spending trends.
SPOTLIGHT ON

SHOPPABLE ADS

Search shopping ads grew nearly as much year-over-year as the Ecommerce Channel, while Social product ads also outperformed the overall channel.

HOLIDAY 2020

Ecommerce Channel Ads led the way to increased holiday spending for Shopping & Retail advertisers, growing average daily spend for the entire season (Nov 1 through Dec 25) by 66% on a same-advertiser basis.

ELECTION SOCIAL SPENDING

With all the votes counted, October spending blew the rest of 2020 out of the water for Law & Government advertisers in the Paid Social channel, with high CPMs as well.
CORE TRENDS

Social Trends

The one-two punch of holiday shopping and the 2020 election fueled the rebound in Paid Social ad spending.
Ad prices spiked sharply compared to last quarter, and were also 7% higher than Q4 of last year
Impressions
QoQ
+26%
YoY
+30%
Clicks
QoQ
+31%
YoY
+23%
Spending
QoQ
+61%
YoY
+39%
CTR
QoQ
+4%
YoY
-5%
CPM
QoQ
+28%
YoY
+7%

Search Trends

Paid Search investment continued to grow an accelerated rate, building on the year-over-year strength established last quarter.
Higher click-through rates for non-shopping search ads led to more clicks in the second half of 2020.
Impressions
QoQ
+35%
YoY
+68%
Clicks
QoQ
+30%
YoY
+54%
Spending
QoQ
+32%
YoY
+32%
CTR
QoQ
-4%
YoY
-8%
CPC
QoQ
+2%
YoY
-14%

Ecommerce Trends

Prime Day plus holiday shopping plus more online shopping all combined for a breakout quarter.
More than double the number of ads were served last quarter compared to the previous year.
Impressions
QoQ
+55%
YoY
+127%
Clicks
QoQ
+57%
YoY
+71%
Spending
QoQ
+71%
YoY
+78%
CTR
QoQ
0%
YoY
-24%
CPC
QoQ
+9%
YoY
+4%

View reports from previous quarters:

Methodology

Analysis is drawn from a population of approximately $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. 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.