Digital Marketing Snapshot

Spending growth continued to accelerate year-over-year in Search and Social, largely due to favorable comparisons to the low point of pandemic disruption.

Retail Media spending growth was still very strong, with Prime Day providing an extra boost in June.
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW
CROSS-CHANNEL COMMERCE
CORE TRENDS
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW
Social advertisers are paying higher CPMs for the same quantity of impressions, and shifting to less direct response-focused campaigns, both likely a result of Apple iOS 14.5 and accompanying data privacy changes.
App advertisers on the Skai platform appear to be diversifying away from Facebook, which could also be a strategic response to the impact of data privacy on highly leveraged targeting and measurement models.
While still elevated over 2020 levels, clickthrough rates for keyword ads in paid search are starting to taper off, which could indicate that the urgency of online search during lockdowns is easing.
Search spending in the Travel segment took a big jump forward in Q2, growing 74% from the previous quarter and more than 4X since Q2 of last year.
SOCIAL PRICING AND STRATEGY
Social advertisers are paying higher CPMs for the same quantity of impressions, and shifting to less direct response-focused campaigns, both likely a result of Apple iOS 14.5 and accompanying data privacy changes.
APP ADVERTISER DIVERSIFICATION
App advertisers on the Skai platform appear to be diversifying away from Facebook, which could also be a strategic response to the impact of data privacy on highly leveraged targeting and measurement models.
KEYWORD SEARCH CTR SLOWS
While still elevated over 2020 levels, clickthrough rates for keyword ads in paid search are starting to taper off, which could indicate that the urgency of online search during lockdowns is easing.
TRAVEL REBOUND CONTINUES
Search spending in the Travel segment took a big jump forward in Q2, growing 74% from the previous quarter and more than 4X since Q2 of last year.
CROSS-CHANNEL COMMERCE

COMMERCE ADVERTISERS

Paid Social spending grew the most for commerce advertisers with a year-over-year increase of 61%.

SHOPPING ADS

Spending on Paid Search shopping ads slowed relative to the other channels as shoppers started to return to physical stores.

SHOPPING AD SHARE

As a percentage of total spending, Shopping Ads consistently comprise between 30% and 40% of total spending from commerce advertisers in Search and Social.
CORE TRENDS

Paid Social Trends

Social spending grew 41% compared to the same quarter last year, which was the hardest hit by the pandemic.
Higher CPMs drove the increase, as impression growth year-over-year was flat.
Impressions
QoQ
-10%
YoY
+0%
Clicks
QoQ
-8%
YoY
-4%
Spending
QoQ
+3%
YoY
+41%
CTR
QoQ
+2%
YoY
-4%
CPM
QoQ
+14%
YoY
+41%

Paid Search Trends

Paid Search continued its strong form with another big quarter for spending, growing over last year by 60%.
Click prices were up both quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year, and returned to pre-pandemic levels.
Impressions
QoQ
-7%
YoY
+18%
Clicks
QoQ
-8%
YoY
+19%
Spending
QoQ
+8%
YoY
+60%
CTR
QoQ
-1%
YoY
+1%
CPC
QoQ
+17%
YoY
+34%

Retail Media Trends

Retail Media ad spending jumped 55% over the same quarter last year.
Prime Day provided a boost in June as spending in the channel started to lap last year's online shopping boom.
Impressions
QoQ
+0%
YoY
+25%
Clicks
QoQ
+6%
YoY
+25%
Spending
QoQ
+19%
YoY
+55%
CTR
QoQ
+9%
YoY
0%
CPC
QoQ
+12%
YoY
+24%

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.