Digital Marketing Snapshot

Skai Quarterly Trends Infographic

Spending up across channels in Q1, with a majority of advertisers increasing budgets year-over-year

Higher ad prices played a role in growth across retail media, paid search and paid social while higher ad volume also factored into retail media and paid social.
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW
FOCUS ON COMMERCE
CORE TRENDS
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW
Spending increased year-over-year (YoY) in all channels even as quarterly spending dropped sequentially with the end of holiday seasonality.
Over 50% of accounts increased channel spending by at least 5% over Q1 of last year and two-thirds of retail media advertisers spent more YoY.
As retail media spending has grown and prices have risen, attributed sales have kept pace, resulting in no change to ROAS for the channel.
Even as spending has more than doubled YoY, adoption of Performance Max campaigns has slowed since the pre-holiday jump from Q2 to Q3 of last year.
Reels placements across both Facebook and Instagram grew much faster than overall Meta spending and reached 10% of total spending in Q1.
SPENDING UP OVER LAST YEAR AND DOWN FROM LAST QUARTER
Spending increased year-over-year (YoY) in all channels even as quarterly spending dropped sequentially with the end of holiday seasonality.
MOST ADVERTISERS SPENT MORE IN Q1 THAN LAST YEAR
Over 50% of accounts increased channel spending by at least 5% over Q1 of last year and two-thirds of retail media advertisers spent more YoY.
RETAIL MEDIA SCALES UP SMOOTHLY
As retail media spending has grown and prices have risen, attributed sales have kept pace, resulting in no change to ROAS for the channel.
PERFORMANCE MAX MAXES OUT?
Even as spending has more than doubled YoY, adoption of Performance Max campaigns has slowed since the pre-holiday jump from Q2 to Q3 of last year.
REELS GAIN SHARE ACROSS META ECOSYSTEM
Reels placements across both Facebook and Instagram grew much faster than overall Meta spending and reached 10% of total spending in Q1.
FOCUS ON COMMERCE

COMMERCE YOY SPENDING GROWTH ACROSS CHANNELS

Paid social saw a very large increase in designated product ads, persisting even after the holiday season.

PRODUCT AD PRICING ACROSS CHANNELS

Seasonal price “premiums” receded across channels, with retail media moving the least just as prices in that channel grew the least in Q4.

COMMERCE AD EXPANSION AND EVOLUTION

Share of the newer shopping placements dropped for both Google and Meta after the holidays, while Amazon DSP held steady compared to last quarter.
CORE TRENDS

Retail Media Trends

Retail media spending continues to lead growth in digital ad channels.
A combination of higher click volume and increased cost-per-click drove spending up 24% over Q1 of last year.
Impressions
QoQ
-19%
YoY
+9%
Clicks
QoQ
-16%
YoY
+7%
Spending
QoQ
-18%
YoY
+24%
CTR
QoQ
+5%
YoY
-2%
CPC
QoQ
-3%
YoY
+15%

Search Trends

Search spending increased 6% over Q1 of last year, with Google search growing 8%.
The transition to Performance Max continues to drive fewer impressions and clicks, but with a higher CPC such that overall growth remains steady.
Impressions
QoQ
-10%
YoY
-10%
Clicks
QoQ
-15%
YoY
-8%
Spending
QoQ
-20%
YoY
+6%
CTR
QoQ
-5%
YoY
+3%
CPC
QoQ
-6%
YoY
+15%

Social Trends

The overall paid social channel increased spend 17% YoY with Meta growing 8%.
Year-over-year CPM grew in our data for the first time since Q1 2022 while impression growth was the lowest since that same quarter.
NOTE: As of Q4 2023, paid social analysis has expanded to include TikTok, YouTube and LinkedIn. Snap was added in Q1 2024.
Impressions
QoQ
-5%
YoY
+13%
Clicks
QoQ
-19%
YoY
+5%
Spending
QoQ
-7%
YoY
+17%
CTR
QoQ
-14%
YoY
-6%
CPM
QoQ
-2%
YoY
+4%

View reports from previous quarters:

Methodology

Analysis is drawn from a population of approximately $9 billion in advertising spend over five quarters, comprising more than 3,000 advertiser and agency accounts across 40 vertical industries and more than 150 countries running on the Skai™ platform on Google, Microsoft, Baidu, Yandex, Yahoo! Japan, Verizon Media, Amazon, Walmart, Instacart, Criteo, Kroger, Apple Search Ads, Pinterest, Snapchat, Facebook and Instagram.

Except where noted, analysis is based on Skai advertisers with 15 consecutive months of performance data. Some additional outliers have been excluded. Ad spending and pricing have been translated to USD at the time the spending was incurred.

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