Adoption and growth of product-oriented ads across paid search, social, and ecommerce-specific publishers clearly establish the essential pillars for digital marketers heading into the Q4 holiday season

San Francisco (October 18, 2018) Kenshoo (www.Kenshoo.com), a global leader in marketing technology, today released a new infographic, Skai Digital Marketing Quarterly Trends Report: Q3 2018, detailing spending growth in social (40%) and search (10%) year-over-year (YoY) in Q3 2018, identical to Q2 growth. New for Q3 are details on promising growth within ecommerce channel advertising, which are available by clicking the link to the infographic.

Spotlights:

  • Instagram spending increased 94% YoY, faster than core Facebook spending (37% YoY)
  • Instagram and Video ads were the biggest drivers of YoY growth for Q3
  • Mobile paid search shopping campaigns have grown considerably in volume with no degradation of performance, providing a clear opportunity for e-commerce marketers in the upcoming holiday season
  • Pinterest spending across all Skai advertisers in Q3 exceeded its previous high in Q4 of last year, setting the stage for another strong seasonal increase

Key findings include:

  • Social spending increased 40% YoY and 12% quarter-over-quarter (QoQ)
  • Social impressions increased 24% YoY and 7% QoQ
  • Social clicks increased 51% YoY and 5% QoQ
  • Social CTR increased 22% YoY and decreased 3% QoQ
  • Social cost-per-thousand (CPM) impressions increased 14% YoY and 6% QoQ
  • Paid search spending increased 10% YoY and 1% QoQ
  • Paid search impressions increased 38% YoY and 12% QoQ
  • Paid search clicks increased 28% YoY and 6% QoQ
  • Paid search CTR decreased 7% both YoY and QoQ
  • Paid search CPC decreased 15% YoY and 5% QoQ

“The rumors are true that marketers accelerated the push on Instagram over Facebook in Q3, but overall, social still grew at a steady rate, in part because direct-response ads — notably dynamic product ads in the social channel — are providing value to marketers, that extends across all channels,” said Chris Costello, senior director of marketing research for Skai. “Skai sees the increasing value of these product-focused ads across paid search, social, ecommerce and Pinterest as evidence that marketers are getting better and better at capturing the demand that is stimulated by branding efforts, like video and Instagram Stories. That demand is only going to get stronger over the holidays.”

Kenshoo provides best-of-breed, full-funnel marketing activation on the channels with highest customer engagement, including search, social, and ecommerce, enabling success by maximizing channel impact and customer lifetime value. As the industry’s leading and award-winning digital marketing platform, Skai delivers opportunities 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 Quarterly Trends Report: Q3 2018.

Methodology
Except where noted, analysis is based on Skai advertisers with 15 consecutive months of performance data taken from a population of over 3,000 advertiser and agency accounts across 20 vertical industries and over 60 countries, spanning Google, Bing, Baidu, Yandex, Yahoo!, Yahoo! Japan, Pinterest, Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram, Amazon and the Facebook® Audience Network. Some outliers have been excluded. The resulting sample includes more than 500 billion impressions, 14 billion clicks and $6 billion (USD) in advertiser spending.

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’s is the leading technology platform for brands looking to plan, activate and amplify effective marketing across the most-engaging digital channels. Skai offers the only marketing solution that provides data-driven insights and optimization technology to help make informed decisions and scale performance across Google, Facebook, Bing, Pinterest, Snapchat, Instagram, Amazon, Apple, Yahoo, Yandex, Yahoo Japan, and Baidu. Skai’s machine-learning algorithms and cutting-edge AI enable companies to predict and keep in-step with the ever-changing consumer journey. With 27 international locations and backed by Sequoia Capital, Arts Alliance, Tenaya Capital, and Bain Capital Ventures, Skai generates over $350 billion in annualized revenue for the world’s top brands. Please visit Kenshoo.com for more information.

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