Digital Marketing Snapshot

Ad spending across retail media, search and social grew both quarter-over-quarter (QoQ) and year-over-year (YoY)

Commerce ads across retail media and social channels showed robust growth, while paid search spending focused more on services than goods
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW
FOCUS ON COMMERCE
CORE TRENDS
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW
Retail media expansion fueled brisk growth, search spending was not as sharp as in 2021, and social spending compared favorably to the intro of IDFA last year
Monthly numbers show how marketers pumped the brakes post-IDFA last year, but spent more consistently this year as solutions to signal loss have picked up steam
Over the last two quarters, Responsive Search Ads (RSA) have overtaken Expanded Text Ads (ETA) as the dominant search ad format as a percentage of search spend
Walmart changed its bidding process to use a “second-price auction” starting on June 6th, resulting in a drop in cost-per-click (CPC) of 17% for the week of the switch
GROWTH CONTINUES ACROSS CHANNELS
Retail media expansion fueled brisk growth, search spending was not as sharp as in 2021, and social spending compared favorably to the intro of IDFA last year
IDFA ONE YEAR LATER
Monthly numbers show how marketers pumped the brakes post-IDFA last year, but spent more consistently this year as solutions to signal loss have picked up steam
RSA REPLACING ETA IN SEARCH
Over the last two quarters, Responsive Search Ads (RSA) have overtaken Expanded Text Ads (ETA) as the dominant search ad format as a percentage of search spend
WALMART ADOPTS SECOND-PRICE AUCTIONS
Walmart changed its bidding process to use a “second-price auction” starting on June 6th, resulting in a drop in cost-per-click (CPC) of 17% for the week of the switch
FOCUS ON COMMERCE

COMMERCE SPENDING GROWTH

Commerce spending in social media was a major driver of overall investment in the channel, whether based on accounts or ad types, even outgrowing retail media both QoQ and YoY

SHOPPING AD SHARE

Retail & commerce advertisers in paid search and paid social spent a comparable share of their budgets on shopping-specific campaigns and ad types
CORE TRENDS

Social Trends

Spending grew faster than expected, as emerging solutions to new online privacy controls encouraged more consistent spending than last year
Segments that were heavily disrupted by IDFA seem to be snapping back, particularly Local/SMB and Commerce
Impressions
QoQ
+6%
YoY
+15%
Clicks
QoQ
+2%
YoY
+2%
Spending
QoQ
+15%
YoY
+15%
CTR
QoQ
-4%
YoY
-11%
CPM
QoQ
+9%
YoY
-0%

Search Trends

Spending levels were mostly unchanged from last quarter, yielding growth of 11% over last year
More sophisticated ad formats and bidding strategies continue to drive growth as they replace legacy options
Impressions
QoQ
+2%
YoY
+15%
Clicks
QoQ
-1%
YoY
+3%
Spending
QoQ
+3%
YoY
+11%
CTR
QoQ
-3%
YoY
-11%
CPC
QoQ
+4%
YoY
+8%

Retail Media Trends

Advertisers continued to invest in retail media ad spending, driving total expenditures up 42% over Q2 of last year
Ads for CPG products are proliferating on newer retail media networks like Instacart and Kroger, driving overall growth
Impressions
QoQ
+18%
YoY
+33%
Clicks
QoQ
+19%
YoY
+44%
Spending
QoQ
+17%
YoY
+42%
CTR
QoQ
+3%
YoY
+8%
CPC
QoQ
-2%
YoY
-1%

View reports from previous quarters:

Methodology

Analysis is drawn from a population of approximately $9 billion in advertising spend over five quarters, comprising more than 3,000 advertiser and agency accounts across 40 vertical industries and more than 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 and Instagram.

Except where noted, analysis is based on Skai advertisers with 15 consecutive months of performance data. 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.