New ad types and device-level controls improve targeting and performance

San Francisco (April 25, 2017) Skai (www.Kenshoo.com), the global leader in agile marketing, today released a new infographic, Skai Digital Marketing Snapshot: Q1 2017, highlighting the continued impact that mobile, product-focused and video ad types deliver for social and search advertisers. Social ad spending increased 41% year-over-year (YoY), supported by substantial growth in video ad (153%) and Dynamic Ad (202%) spending. In search, increased spending on mobile ads (45%) resulted in a 10% rise in total search spend YoY as mobile provided the majority of search clicks for the second straight quarter.

Other key findings include:

  • Social impressions increased 14% YoY but decreased 9% quarter-over-quarter (QoQ)
  • Social clicks increased 45% YoY but decreased 9% QoQ
  • Social click-through rate (CTR) increased 27% YoY and 1% QoQ
  • Social cost-per-thousand (CPM) impressions increased 24% YoY but decreased 8% QoQ
  • Paid search impressions increased 2% YoY but decreased 7% QoQ
  • Paid search clicks increased 11% YoY but decreased 3% QoQ
  • Paid search click-through rate increased 9% YoY and 4% QoQ

“The first quarter usually shows a return to normalcy following the heavily retail-focused holiday season; even more so this year when you consider the impact of political ad spending on paid social  ads,” said Chris Costello, senior director of marketing research for Skai. “Yet, both paid search and the maturing paid social platforms sustained double-digit growth year-over-year, showing the value advertisers find in both platforms for reaching global audiences. Their faith has been rewarded with sustained growth in clicks and in click-through rates.”

Additionally, advertisers have started shifting away from the generic page post link ads in social to capitalize on new ad types offering dedicated functionality to better engage target audiences. For example, even as the video-intensive election season concluded, video ads on social maintained a nearly 30% share of social ad spending. In paid search, Expanded Text Ads now make up a majority of search clicks, with the evolved ad format helping drive overall engagement with traditional paid search keyword ads.

The Skai Infinity Suite leads the way in digital marketing innovation, enabling success for agile marketers by maximizing customer lifetime value. Built upon Skai’s industry-leading and award-winning digital marketing platform, the Skai Infinity Suite delivers infinite optimization to re-engage and grow customers across the world’s leading publishers and all devices.

Visit Kenshoo.com/Digital-Marketing-Snapshot to download the new infographic, Skai Digital Marketing Snapshot: Q1 2017.

Methodology

Search and social results are based on five quarters of performance data managed on the Skai platform from over 3,000 advertiser and agency accounts across 20 vertical industries and over 60 countries, spanning Google, Bing, Baidu, Yandex, Yahoo!, Yahoo! Japan and the Facebook® Audience Network. Some outliers have been excluded. The resulting sample includes more than 600 billion impressions, 13 billion clicks and $6 billion (USD) in advertiser spend. Ad spending and CPC are measured using Ex-FX or “Constant Currency” adjustments, where results are based on native currency, and only translated to common currency after aggregation.

About Skai

Skai is a technology company that equips marketers with self-service applications to build their brands and generate demand by executing digital advertising across the world’s leading mobile and desktop publishers. Skai offers the only marketing solution that is deeply integrated across Google, Facebook, Bing, Pinterest, Snapchat, Instagram, Yahoo, Yandex, Yahoo Japan, and Baidu through each publisher’s native APIs. Skai’s solutions are architected upon the principles of agile marketing which include audience targeting, optimization algorithms, automation controls, and actionable analytics to allow marketers to quickly and efficiently keep their marketing programs in-step with the ever-changing consumer journey. Skai has 27 international locations and is backed by Sequoia Capital, Arts Alliance, Tenaya Capital, and Bain Capital Ventures. Please visit Kenshoo.com for more information.

Facebook® is a registered trademark of Facebook, Inc.

Skai brand and product names are trademarks of Skai Ltd. Other company and brand names may be trademarks of their respective owners.
—###—

Contact

Nick Olsen
PReturn
312-432-9407
nolsen@preturn.com