Marketers spent 86% more on social advertising year-on-year in Q1 2016 with spend on mobile ads on social networks going up by 122% globally according to the latest quarterly data from Kenshoo.
Product focused ads on Facebook and growing interest in Instagram have also contributed to the rise in social advertising – pushing spend in Q1 of this year higher than in the last quarter of 2015 (going against normal seasonal ad spend patterns which tend to suggest the Christmas quarter is usually the busiest).
Ads promoting mobile apps now account for 25% of all social ad spend (up from 20% a year ago).
In paid search engine advertising, marketers spent 98% more on Product Listing Ads (PLAs) in Q1 2016 than they did in Q1 last year and more than half of all clicks on search ads now come from mobile devices.
Overall, the data shows that mobile and product-focused advertising were central to driving Q1 growth in both paid search and social, with phones and tablets generating the majority of clicks through both channels.
The findings of the study are presented in a new infographic, Kenshoo Digital Marketing Snapshot: Q1 2016, highlighting key quarterly global metrics and benchmarks for social advertising and paid search based on five quarters of performance, analysing more than 500 billion impressions, 10 billion clicks and $5.5 billion (USD) in advertiser spend through the Kenshoo Infinity Suite.
Rob Coyne, Kenshoo’s Managing Director for EMEA, said: “There’s a real opportunity for advertisers to drive significant performance gains in both paid search and social advertising through harnessing new ad types such as Instagram. Marketers are showing an increasing appetite for more direct response product-focused advertising, with PLAs and Dynamic Product Ads now a key part of a strong digital marketing strategy, along with app promotion.”
Clicks from paid social ads in the first quarter increased by 54% compared to a year ago, with clicks from mobile (phones + tablets) jumping 92%. Mobile ads now account for 71% of all social clicks, 63% of spend and 46% of impressions.
Mobile App Install ads are becoming increasingly important in social, accounting for 25% of all spend (up from 20% a year ago) and 17% of clicks. For mobile app advertisers, Instagram generated 14% of total impressions and 17% of clicks in Q1 2016.
In paid search, total clicks were up 36% YoY, with impressions up 31%. Here, 29% of all spend and 40% of clicks are coming from smartphones. Mobile (phones + tablet) accounts for 52% of all clicks and 42% of spend. Desktop keywords, which are often overlooked amid the focus on mobile and product ads, grew 5% YoY in terms of both clicks and spend.
Methodology
Search and social results are based on five quarters of performance data managed on the Kenshoo platform from over 3,000 advertiser and agency accounts across 20 vertical industries and over 60 countries, spanning Google, Bing, Baidu, Yahoo!, Yahoo! Japan and the Facebook® Audience Network. Some outliers have been excluded. The resulting sample includes more than 500 billion impressions, 10 billion clicks and $5.5 billion (USD) in advertiser spend.
Source: www.Kenshoo.com