Skai to Release Q2 Digital Marketing Quarterly Trends Infographic

Today, Skai, an omnichannel performance marketing platform, released its Q2 2022 Quarterly Digital Marketing Trends infographic, an in-depth analysis of the digital marketing trends that defined the last quarter (Q2), with a full report to follow next week. Overall spending increased across all channels compared to last quarter and year to year.

Overall spending growth continues
Retail media growth accelerated 42% year-over-year (YoY) in the second quarter as advertisers continued to increase spending both on Amazon and the ever-growing scope of other networks retail media. Paid social media spending growth increased 15% as 2022 proved to be a more stable spending environment than the same period last year, which was disrupted by increased user privacy controls on Apple mobile devices. Paid search spending increased 11% year-over-year.

Shopping is an important factor across all channels
Retail media growth has, by definition, been driven by more brands trying to reach a larger group of buyers while in the market. Growth in paid social spending in the quarter also benefited from investment in commerce-focused ad types and commerce-focused advertisers. Only in paid search did investment seem to follow the macroeconomic trend away from goods and towards services.

Social advertisers adapt to the IDFA
2021 saw sequential declines in spending from April to May to June, as the release of iOS 14.5 introduced changes to privacy controls and data availability for targeting and measurement. With myriad solutions and workarounds in place for these disruptions this year, monthly paid social media spend has been much more stable in 2022, paving the way for accelerated growth.

Responsive Search Ads Now Dominate Search Spend
The migration of paid search from the Expanded Text Ad (ETA) format to the Responsive Search Ad (RSA) format has reached the point where RSA is now dominant, accounting for 38% of total spend in Q2, compared to just 23% in Q2 last. year. ETA spending fell from 40% to 27% of spending over the same period, with shopping ads making up the bulk of the balance.

Other quarter-over-quarter (TQ) and year-over-year results include:

“This quarter was defined by how advertisers reach buyers, and that through a conscious mix of walled garden channels,” said Chris Costello, Senior Director of Marketing Research at Skai. “Advertisers and retail brands increased their social media investments to drive demand, then continued to grow their ad presence all the way down the funnel with retail media spend, where the intention to purchase is the strongest. Meanwhile, we’re seeing more direct evidence of how social media advertising has adapted and rebounded compared to the second quarter of last year, when the introduction of the IDFA led to a decrease social budgets. This year, solutions to the loss of targeting and measurement signals have helped stabilize those spending levels, resulting in stronger social media spending growth than many expected.

For more information and to view the infographic, visit skai.io/digital-marketing-trends/.

Methodology
The analysis is drawn from a population of approximately $9 billion in ad spend over five quarters, including over 3,000 advertiser and agency accounts in 40 verticals and over 150 countries using the Skai™ platform across Google, Microsoft, Baidu, Yandex, Yahoo! Japan, Verizon Media, Amazon, Walmart, Instacart, Criteo, Apple Search Ads, Pinterest, Snapchat, Facebook and Instagram. Unless otherwise specified, only advertisers with 15 consecutive months of performance data are included. Some additional outliers were excluded. Advertising expenses and prices have been converted to USD at the time the expenses were incurred, where applicable.

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