Digital Marketing Snapshot

The acceleration of online shopping over the last 12 months yielded robust growth across digital channels in the first quarter of the year.

Paid Search spending was buoyed by commerce advertising, Retail Media grew with the expansion of publishers, and Social Media ad prices were a key factor in spending growth for that channel.
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW
SPOTLIGHT ON
CORE TRENDS
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW
The growth of Search spending on shopping ads and by commerce advertisers mirrored the Retail Media channel, emphasizing the impact of ecommerce growth beyond the point of sale.
Changes in Social Ad spending have tracked closely with changes in ad prices, and those prices dipped from Q4 to Q1 after the end of both the holiday and the election seasons.
Spending on Retail Media Ads has evolved beyond just Amazon, with Instacart and Walmart comprising 11% of total spending in the channel in Q1.
As Publisher Automated Bidding has become more widely adopted for keyword search ads, clickthrough rates and click prices have increased, tripling year-over-year spending.
THE COMMERCE 'HALO EFFECT'
The growth of Search spending on shopping ads and by commerce advertisers mirrored the Retail Media channel, emphasizing the impact of ecommerce growth beyond the point of sale.
SOCIAL SPEND MIRRORS PRICING
Changes in Social Ad spending have tracked closely with changes in ad prices, and those prices dipped from Q4 to Q1 after the end of both the holiday and the election seasons.
RETAIL MEDIA EXPANSION
Spending on Retail Media Ads has evolved beyond just Amazon, with Instacart and Walmart comprising 11% of total spending in the channel in Q1.
AUTOMATED BIDDING DRIVES KEYWORD SEARCH PERFORMANCE
As Publisher Automated Bidding has become more widely adopted for keyword search ads, clickthrough rates and click prices have increased, tripling year-over-year spending.
SPOTLIGHT ON

COMMERCE ADVERTISERS

Tracking the total spending of Commerce advertisers reinforces the similarities in spending trends across channels.

SHOPPING ADS

Over the past four quarters, the share of total spending on shopping-specific ads from commerce advertisers in Search and Social has been similar.

APP ADVERTISERS

Apple Search Ads spending increased from Q4 to Q1, bucking the typical seasonal trend for other online ad publishers.
CORE TRENDS

Social Trends

With the holidays and the election behind us, year-over-year spending grew, but less than last quarter as CPM receded from Q4 levels.
Two out of three Facebook ad dollars were managed under Campaign Budget Optimization in Q1, with spending in this segment growing 77% year-over-year.
Impressions
QoQ
-4%
YoY
+13%
Clicks
QoQ
-15%
YoY
+13%
Spending
QoQ
-19%
YoY
+32%
CTR
QoQ
-12%
YoY
+1%
CPM
QoQ
-16%
YoY
+17%

Search Trends

A “perfect storm” of conditions drove record growth for Paid Search advertising dollars.
Higher clickthrough rates for keyword search ads drove significantly more clicks YoY despite flat impression volume, in contrast to shopping ads where impressions surged.
Impressions
QoQ
-9%
YoY
+88%
Clicks
QoQ
-8%
YoY
+66%
Spending
QoQ
-13%
YoY
+46%
CTR
QoQ
+2%
YoY
-12%
CPC
QoQ
-6%
YoY
-12%

Retail Media Trends

Another strong quarter for Retail Media spending, with new retailers compensating for a lack of key events.
The Retail Media universe is starting to expand beyond just Amazon, down to 89% of total spend compared to 98% one year ago.
Impressions
QoQ
-29%
YoY
+89%
Clicks
QoQ
-22%
YoY
+65%
Spending
QoQ
-24%
YoY
+74%
CTR
QoQ
+10%
YoY
-11%
CPC
QoQ
-3%
YoY
+5%

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, Instacart, Criteo, 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.