Dive Brief:

• Kenshoo released its “Digital Marketing Snapshot: Q2 2017” and found mobile and product ads increased social media spending 40% year-over-year and search ad spending 10%, per a press release made available to Marketing Dive. Mobile ad spending was up 51% on social media and 45% for search ads, and product ads spending was up 63% on social media and 33% for search ads.
• Video ad spending on social media continues to grow and consistently comprises almost 30% of total social media spending, and higher engagement expanded text ads get almost 60% of search keyword ad impressions.
• “More and more consumers are clicking on mobile ads, product ads and mobile product ads, which encourages more ad inventory from publishers and more investment from marketers,” said Chris Costello, senior director of marketing research for Kenshoo, in the press release. “These ads have become the lynchpins of digital advertising, and as advertisers have seen success and engagement with these devices and formats, they increased investments, sustaining double-digit growth for the whole of social and paid search.”

Dive Insight:

One of the larger trends from the report was social media impressions are down in 2017 as right-hand desktop ads have decreased significantly in volume. At the same time social media CPM and clickthrough rates have increased because the lower-priced and less-clicked desktop impressions made less of a contribution to the larger social media picture. Carousel ads in particular helped improved social media clickthrough rates.

Search ads continued a steady year-over-year increase with shopping campaigns and mobile ads driving that growth this year, but new mobile ad inventory at lower rates than existing campaigns helped drive cost-per-click (CPC) numbers down. Expanded text ads led to a notable increase in clickthrough rate for search ads.

The growth in product ads comes as Google continues to strength in its Shopping campaigns while other platforms ramp up their product-based ad units to compete. Facebook introduced the Collection ad unit earlier this year, which are built on a primary video or image that, when clicked on, takes viewers to an immersive, fast-loading page that can include up to 50 products. Also, Instagram expanded a carousel-like feature with photos users can tap on to get pricing and product information. Pinterest also has product-based campaigns.