The findings, from Marin Software’s Q2 2019 Digital Advertising Benchmark Report, indicate that marketers are embracing newer features of well-known social media platforms, like Instagram Stories, to reach new potential customers and their effort is paying off.
This rapid growth is down to:
- eCommerce Continues to Thrive: 40% ad spend increase recorded in eCommerce advertising as Amazon maintains its healthy lead
- Engaging Stories Format Pays Off: 45% of all Instagram spend occurred on Stories as advertisers and consumers embrace the ad format
- Search Click Volume Rises: With 13% YoY growth, paid search click volume has shown solid growth globally
The full research and takeaways are presented in an interactive format that allows viewers to analyse trends by region, industry and publisher. Key findings include:
eCommerce Continues to Thrive: 40 percent ad spend increase recorded in eCommerce advertising as Amazon maintains its healthy lead. Shopping ads represented 37 percent of total search spend share, as Google Shopping continues to be a key source of traffic and online orders for many retailers.
Engaging Stories Format Pays Off: 45 percent of all Instagram spend occurred on Stories as advertisers and consumers embrace the ad format. Features like Instagram Story Links and Highlights are keeping social audiences more engaged as Instagram slowly becomes more of a direct selling tool.
Search Click Volume Rises: With 13 percent YoY growth, paid search click volume has shown solid growth globally. Specific industries have seen more dramatic growth, led by Healthcare (+30 percent), Technology (+25 percent), and Retail (+24 percent).
Search CPCs are Dropping Across All Industries: Retail at £0.31 and travel at £0.36 recorded the lowest CPCs this quarter. Notably, healthcare saw a sharp drop, with the lowest CPCs in five quarters at £0.88. As the healthcare industry becomes more customer-centric, marketers can find good value for clicks by boosting their paid search budgets accordingly.
“Marketers are embracing newer features of well-known social media platforms, like Instagram Stories, to reach new potential customers and the effort is paying off,” said Wesley MacLaggan, SVP of Marketing at Marin Software. “It will also come as no surprise that eCommerce continues to grow, and the breakout star this quarter was Amazon’s Sponsored Brand Ads, which allows brands to promote multiple products and drive customers directly to a product detail page on the Amazon Store. With a 13 percent QoQ growth in sales and impressions, marketers continue to find new value in the platform. As the lines between search, social, and eCommerce continue to blur, marketers embrace the freedom to try new ad formats, while also relying on tried-and-true platforms.”
To create its Q2 2019 Digital Advertising Benchmark Report, Marin Software aggregated data from customers who invest billions of dollars in combined annualised ad spend on paid search, social, mobile, and eCommerce. Marin Software only includes those advertisers active on its platform for the past five quarters, measuring key performance indicators on a year-over-year and quarter-over-quarter basis, and removing any outliers with significant YoY or QoQ changes.
www.marinsoftware.com.