Quarterly global spend on social advertising grew by 114% year-on-year (YoY) in Q2 2015, twice as fast as a year ago, according to the latest data from Kenshoo, the global leader in agile marketing software. Mobile phone and tablet ad spend is up 167% YoY and together they now account for 63% of total paid social budgets (up from 51% last year).
The data is presented in a new infographic, Kenshoo Digital Marketing Snapshot: Q2 2015, highlighting key quarterly metrics and benchmarks for paid search and social advertising based on 550 billion impressions, 9.5 billion clicks and $5.5 billion (USD) in advertiser spend through the Kenshoo Infinity Suite.
In paid search the research reveals that quarterly spend increased by 10% YoY, fueled entirely by growth in mobile ads (71%) and tablet ads (4%), while desktop search spend decreased slightly (-2%). Mobile devices are playing an increasingly bigger role in search advertising, accounting for 38% of spend (a 37% YoY rise), 44% of clicks, and 34% of advertiser revenue.
“Both paid search and social are showing healthy increases in spend and clicks with social obviously showing the much faster growth as it’s a far younger market,” said Rob Coyne, Kenshoo’s Managing Director for EMEA. “Existing social advertisers are ramping up spend and getting better results in terms of click volumes despite fewer available impressions, while new social advertisers are also entering the market. Mobile has been the key driver of growth in both search and social, with 36% of revenue from advertiser sales now coming from mobile phones, up from 16% last year.”
Total clicks from social advertising increased by 129% over the year on top of 64% fewer impressions, demonstrating that marketers are becoming more savvy at driving clicks on (and engagement with) social ads. Social advertisers have also enjoyed a dramatic 535% rise in click-through rate (CTR) as they adjust, adapt and take advantage of changes in the structure and available inventory of paid social publishers.
The Kenshoo Digital Marketing Snapshot: Q2 2015 infographic can be viewed here.
Search and social results are based on five quarters of performance data from over 6,000 Kenshoo advertiser and agency profiles across 17 vertical industries and 51 countries, spanning the Google, Bing, Baidu, Yahoo!, Yahoo! Japan and Facebook ad networks. The resulting sample includes more than 550 billion impressions, 9.5 billion clicks and $5.5 billion (USD) in advertiser spend. Advertiser spend and Cost-Per-Click are calculated in US Dollars and are not adjusted for currency fluctuations.
