Infographic: Digital Marketing Snapshot

Digital ad spending grew across channels, but with some limits imposed by the compressed holiday calendar

Automated bidding now makes up a majority of both search and social spending
Year-over-year ad prices were either down or flat across all channels
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW
MOBILE/PRODUCT SPOTLIGHT
CORE TRENDS
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW
Over half of social spending now runs through Facebook Campaign Budget Optimization (CBO)
Normally, ecommerce accounts grow faster than overall search in Q4, but with the shortened period between Thanksgiving and Christmas, spending in this segment trailed the overall search market
With a 30% year-over-year (YOY) increase in ad spending, ecommerce channel advertising continues to grow faster than either search or social
As expected, spending growth for Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday showed more year-over-year growth across channels than the entire 28-day comparison period between last year and this year
Social
Over half of social spending now runs through Facebook Campaign Budget Optimization (CBO)
Search
Normally, ecommerce accounts grow faster than overall search in Q4, but with the shortened period between Thanksgiving and Christmas, spending in this segment trailed the overall search market
Ecommerce
With a 30% year-over-year (YOY) increase in ad spending, ecommerce channel advertising continues to grew faster than either search or social
HOLIDAY 2019
As expected, spending growth for Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday showed more year-over-year growth across channels than the entire 28-day comparison period between last year and this year
MOBILE/PRODUCT SPOTLIGHT

Mobile Spotlight

Mobile ads comprised 88% of Q4 social spending and 54% of search spending, and year-over-year spending growth for mobile search was more than double that of other devices

Product Spotlight

Social product ads started accelerating in Q3, while search growth was more focused in the fourth quarter
CORE TRENDS

Social Trends

    Impression volume for social ads grew 28% compared to the fourth quarter of last year
  • With ad prices declining over the same period, total ad spending grew by 24%
  • Advertisers are embracing automation as the Facebook opportunities continue to get more complex, but that means different things to different people
Impressions
QoQ
+7%
YoY
+28%
Clicks
QoQ
+9%
YoY
+24%
Spending
QoQ
+28%
YoY
+24%
CTR
QoQ
+2%
YoY
-3%
CPM
QoQ
+20%
YoY
-3%

Search Trends

    Search spending grew 6% over the fourth quarter of last year
  • The compressed holiday schedule definitely had an impact on spending growth, by as much as 4 percentage points
  • Greater sophistication of programs has driven greater efficiency, generally leading to decreases in overall cost per click (CPC) in the channel
Impressions
QoQ
+29%
YoY
+8%
Clicks
QoQ
+14%
YoY
+9%
Spending
QoQ
+19%
YoY
+6%
CTR
QoQ
-12%
YoY
+1%
CPC
QoQ
+4%
YoY
-3%

View reports from previous quarters:

Methodology

Analysis is drawn from a population of nearly $7B in annualized advertising spend, comprising over 3,000 advertiser and agency accounts across 40 vertical industries and over 150 countries running on the Kenshoo platform across Google, Microsoft, Baidu, Yandex, Yahoo! Japan, Verizon Media, Amazon, 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 in the analysis. Some additional outliers may be excluded. Ad spending and pricing are measured using Ex-FX or “Constant Currency” adjustments, where results are based on native currency, and only translated to common currency after aggregation.

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.