{"id":6378,"date":"2018-05-15T08:54:44","date_gmt":"2018-05-15T03:24:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.karooya.com\/blog\/?p=6378"},"modified":"2018-07-23T22:59:48","modified_gmt":"2018-07-23T17:29:48","slug":"key-highlights-from-merkle-q1-2018-digital-marketing-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.karooya.com\/blog\/key-highlights-from-merkle-q1-2018-digital-marketing-report\/","title":{"rendered":"Key Highlights From Merkle Q1, 2018 Digital Marketing Report"},"content":{"rendered":"

Merkle released its Digital Marketing Report for Quarter 1, 2018 last month. We elaborate some of the key findings from the report in this post.<\/p>\n

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You can download the report from\u00a0here<\/a><\/p>\n

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Growing Paid Search Spend<\/strong><\/p>\n

While the overall paid search spend grew by 21% YoY, Google paid search spend grew 20% YoY. This growth in the ad spend has been attributed to the rising CPCs. The quarter witnessed high CPCs which grew by 13% YoY across ad formats, whereas the clicks grew by 7%.<\/p>\n

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Google PLA’s Cannibalizing Text Ad Clicks<\/strong><\/p>\n

Q1 witnessed the a spike in the spending on Google Shopping Ads. Considered to be the highest growth observed since last 2 years, PLA’s beat text ads with a 40% YoY growth from 32% in Q4, 2017. The text ads only managed to grow to 4% from 15% growth in last quarter. This growth is attributed to the new ad variations such as the LIAs and Showcase shopping ads<\/p>\n\"Google<\/a>\n

Where LIAs produced 15% of mobile google shopping clicks in this quarter, Showcase ads produced around 3% of the clicks.<\/p>\n

This quarter also saw the largest QoQ increase in click share, from 55% in Q4, 2017 to 60% in Q1, 2018, last four years Additionally, PLA’s now account for 82% of the non-brand paid search clicks.<\/p>\n

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Bing Ads Growth Accredited to PLAs<\/strong><\/p>\n

The overall ad spend of Yahoo an Bing Ads has grown by 35% in the first quarter of 2018. The growth of Bing Ads spend has been as a result of strong click growth of the Product Listing Ads. The PLA spend has increased to 64% in Q1, 2018 with spend on phone product ads growing nearly at 700%.<\/p>\n

The clicks increase by 110% YoY in Q1, 2018 and Bing Product Ads share of retailers search ad clicks rose to 33%. The click share is also observed to have been the highest in the past 2 years.<\/p>\n

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Phones Still Garnering Majority Clicks<\/strong><\/p>\n

The growth observed after the launch of desktop and tablet bids has decelerated at 20% in Q1, 2018, followed with decline in phone spending growth at 33%.<\/p>\n

Alternately the combined phone and table paid search click share was\u00a0 over 60% in Q1, 2018, the highest ever witnessed. Of this phones click share was 51% whereas that of tablet was 9%.\u00a0The combined spend has started rising again and hit 39%, after the dip due to the launch of desktop and tablet bids.<\/p>\n\"device<\/a>\n

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The device click share by search ad platform shows phones producing 55% of clicks for Google, 26% for Yahoo and 18% for Bing Ads, being the highest click share gain witnessed by Bing.<\/p>\n

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Facebook Ad Spend Increases While Impression Drops<\/strong><\/p>\n

Though the ad spend on Facebook increased by 48% YoY, the impressions declined to 5% while the CPM increased at 70% and CPC increased at 10%. On the other hand, Instagram’s impressions doubled to 101% resulting in the ad spend increasing 62% YoY. While the CPC grew at 30% the CPM dropping to 8%<\/p>\n

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For more insight,\u00a0here is the link to the full report<\/a>\u00a0again.<\/p>\n

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Related Links:<\/strong><\/p>\n