Digital Marketing Snapshot

Shoppable ads saw robust spending growth in Q2 despite the challenges of COVID-19

Overall spending for Ecommerce Ads grew both sequentially and year-over-year.
Product-specific shopping ads in both Search and Social channels are up compared to last year, despite the overall channels declining over the same period as the pandemic affects total spend levels.
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW
SHOPPABLE AD SPOTLIGHT
CORE TRENDS
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW
While year-over-year spending on a monthly basis was down in each month of Q2 for the Search and Social channels, the gap between last year and this year is narrowing in both cases.
Consumers saw a lot more product ads across all channels, as impressions for Search Shopping Campaigns, Social Dynamic Product Ads and the entire Ecommerce Ads channel served more ads than during the holiday season.
Across both Search and Social channels, tools and features that automate ad selection and optimization have made significant gains since Q2 of last year, more than doubling spending in each case.
After the vast majority of search spending in the Travel category went away in the second half of the first quarter, spending has increased every week of Q2 as the industry recovers.
RECOVERY WATCH
While year-over-year spending on a monthly basis was down in each month or Q2 for the Search and Social channels, the gap between last year and this year is narrowing in both cases.
ONLINE SHOPPING
Consumers saw a lot more product ads across all channels, as impressions for Search Shopping Campaigns, Social Dynamic Product Ads and the entire Ecommerce Ads channel served more ads than during the holiday season.
AUTOMATION
Across both Search and Social channels, tools and features that automate ad selection and optimization have made significant gains since Q2 of last year, more than doubling spending in each case.
TRAVEL SEARCH
After the vast majority of search spending in the Travel category went away in the second half of the first quarter, spending has increased every week of Q2 as the industry recovers.
Shoppable Ad Spotlight

Shoppable Ad Spotlight

Spending growth on product-specific shopping ads in the Social and Search channels drastically outperformed the rest of the channel in both cases. These product ads comprised 41% of Q2 spend for “shopping and retail” accounts across both channels.
CORE TRENDS

Social Trends

    Declining cost per thousand impressions (CPM) resulted in a decrease in total paid social spending both quarter-over-quarter (QoQ) and year-over-year (YoY), despite greater quantities of those impressions.
  • An increasing share of those impressions came from low-CPM ads aimed at branding and awareness, which points to more broad messaging, presumably showing empathy during the pandemic.
  • While average CPM was down 17% quarter-over-quarter, prices have started to rebound on a monthly basis, with June CPMs eclipsing those from March.
Impressions
QoQ
+4%
YoY
+25%
Clicks
QoQ
+9%
YoY
+33%
Spending
QoQ
-14%
YoY
-13%
CTR
QoQ
+5%
YoY
+7%
CPM
QoQ
-17%
YoY
-30%

Search Trends

    Total spending on paid search campaigns declined on both a quarter-over-quarter (QoQ) and year-over-year (YoY) basis.
  • Year-over-year spending was flat if the Travel category, which was the most heavily affected by the pandemic, is excluded.
  • Increased demand and wider distribution helped search shopping campaigns drive overall increases in search impressions and clicks, as well as lower aggregate click prices.
Impressions
QoQ
+52%
YoY
+62%
Clicks
QoQ
+22%
YoY
+28%
Spending
QoQ
-5%
YoY
-9%
CTR
QoQ
-20%
YoY
-21%
CPC
QoQ
-22%
YoY
-29%

View reports from previous quarters:

Methodology

Analysis is drawn from a population of approximately $7B in advertising spend, comprising over 3,000 advertiser and agency accounts across 40 vertical industries and over 150 countries running on the Kenshoo platform acrosson Google, Microsoft, Baidu, Yandex, Yahoo! Japan, Verizon Media, Amazon, Walmart, Apple Search Ads, Pinterest, Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram and the Facebook Audience Network.

Except where noted, only advertisers with 15 consecutive months of performance data are included. Some additional outliers have been excluded. Contrary to previous reports, ad spending and pricing have been translated to USD at the time the spending was incurred, and do not use Ex-FX, or “constant currency” dollars.

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 Kenshoo as the rolling data set is dynamic for each new quarter.