Ad revenue from Social (Facebook) ads increased 191% year-on-year in Q1 2014, while search advertiser revenue increased 12% according to a new report.
The new quarterly study by Kenshoo also shows that paid search still represents the biggest share of digital marketing investment but Facebook social ad spend is growing at the faster rate of 37% year-on-year (compared with spend on search advertising growing year-on-year at a rate of 10%)
Among the key year-on-year (YoY) findings in the research:
• Search ad spend increased 10% and social spend increased 37%
• Search advertiser revenue increased 12% and social revenue increased 191%
• Search clicks increased 8% and social clicks increased 1%
• Search average cost-per-click was $0.59 (up 2%) and social was $0.25 (up 35%)
View the infographic from Kenshoo illustrating findings from the report below:
View larger image here
“Social advertising is growing fast and, while paid search still commands the lion’s share of online ad budgets, both channels have proven to deliver strong return on investment,” said Aaron Goldman, chief marketing officer of Kenshoo. “The key for marketers is to approach search and social holistically and leverage advanced cross-channel platforms to automate and optimise campaigns.”
“Search has long been the rock of digital marketing plans and will continue to be for its ability to capture intent and drive direct response results. The fact that search is still growing at double-digit yearly rates shows there is plenty of opportunity out there for scale,” added Goldman. “Meanwhile, social advertising has clearly emerged as a vital always-on component of the media mix and its triple-digital growth in revenue proves that marketers are successfully converting social engagement into tangible business outcomes.”
According to Goldman there are two reasons for the big uplift in Social (i.e. Facebook) ad take up and performance indicated by the data:
1. Social is not as mature a channel as search so it’s expected that growth rates will be higher. Paid search is 50%+ of marketer’s spend so it would be tough to grow at 30%+ YoY.
2. Marketers have finally figured out how to use Social (Facebook) to drive direct response results. The fact that revenue is up triple-digits means that marketers are tracking and attributing much more online sales to Social than they were a year ago. This is likely due to better campaign targeting and use of tools like Kenshoo to get the right message to the right person at the right time and give Social the right credit for its role in driving sales.
Methodology
The data analysed by Kenshoo for its Q1 infographic reflect all advertisers and agencies actively using Kenshoo Search and Kenshoo Social for the past 5 quarters and cover more than 500 billion total global ad impressions. The press release underneath provides more information. I can also send you a PDF or JPEG of the Infographic. Please note that where the press release discusses social advertising metrics and data, it is discussing Facebook metrics and data.
Previous research from Kenshoo revealed that complementing search campaigns with social advertising boosts ROI. The data analysed by Kenshoo for its Q1 infographic reflect all advertisers and agencies actively using Kenshoo Search and Kenshoo Social for the past 5 quarters and cover more than 500 billion total global ad impressions.
www.Kenshoo.com