Paid search also grows steadily and delivers an all-time high click-through rate as advertisers become more efficient at running their campaigns
London (July 17, 2014) – Quarterly spend on Facebook advertising increased 51% year-on-year (YOY) in Q2 2014 according to the latest data from Kenshoo (
www.Kenshoo.com), the global leader in predictive media optimisation technology. Spend on search engine advertising increased 25% on 2013 with the click-through rate (CTR) reaching an all-time high as brands and agencies continue to improve and refine their paid search targeting and execution.
The data is presented in a new infographic, Kenshoo Search and Social Snapshot: Q2 2014, highlighting key quarterly metrics and benchmarks for paid search and Facebook advertising based on 400 billion impressions, 4.5 billion clicks and €1.85 billion in advertiser spend through the Kenshoo platform.
“The large growth for Facebook spend demonstrates that advertisers are now increasingly confident about allocating ad budgets to social advertising. Meanwhile search marketing continues to deliver steady returns,” said Justin Thorne, regional marketing director for EMEA at Kenshoo. “Kenshoo has been driving an aggressive agenda to create solutions for marketers to use search intent data and social interaction data to optimise performance.”
Despite being a mature market, paid search budgets and performance continue to rise. The 25% increase in YoY quarterly spend is accompanied by an all-time high CTR of 2.17% – a 26% increase on 2013. The volume of clicks on search ads have increased 15% YoY, with 9% fewer impressions, indicating that search campaigns are getting more efficient as advertisers become better and more sophisticated at using the channel.
Healthy competition and increased investment in digital marketing has driven the price (cost-per click) for search ads to rise 8% over the year and 54% for social ads on Facebook.
To help marketers stay ahead of the curve and leverage key signals from search and social, Kenshoo introduced Intent-Driven Audiences™, the first solution in the market that matches clicks on search engine ads to audiences on Facebook in real-time. This allows marketers to show ads to consumers that have searched for specific keywords and also use Facebook’s targeting capabilities to find more customers like them. Additionally, the Kenshoo Demand-Driven Campaigns™ offering automatically creates and manages product-specific advertising on Facebook based on demand signals of top performing products from marketers’ internal systems, Product Listing Ad (PLA) campaigns, general paid search efforts and other sources.
Accor, the world’s leading hotel operator and market leader in Europe, is one of the brands that recently turned to social advertising to complement its successful paid search campaigns as Daniel Morgan, Head of Search Engine Marketing at the company, explained, “Search and social can combine to drive improved campaign results. We’re using Kenshoo to manage both our search and social ad campaigns and Kenshoo SmartPath attribution technology to strengthen the optimisation of our digital marketing spend by accounting for how search and social, as well as other channels such as email, combine to influence bookings.”
Kenshoo’s innovative approach to delivering industry-leading ad solutions has garnered it significant recognition. In addition to being named a repeat winner in the Facebook Innovation Competition for the online sales category for Intent-Driven Audiences and Demand-Driven Campaigns, Kenshoo was named the sole leader in a Social ad platforms evaluation by independent research firm, Forrester Research Inc. in The Forrester Wave™: Social Advertising Platforms, Q4 2013 after previously being named the sole leader in The Forrester Wave, Bid Management Platforms, Q4 2012.
Further validating the cross-channel impact, a recent study from Kenshoo presented quantifiable evidence that paid search conversion activity increases as advertisers spend more on Facebook and determined a “sweet spot” for marketers’ investments
