NEW YORK, Oct. 9, 2015 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- IgnitionOne, a global marketing cloud leader, today released its Q3 2015 Digital Marketing Report, highlighting trends and data for digital marketing across search, programmatic display, social and mobile. The Q3 report demonstrated continuing trends in digital advertising metrics, marking the fourth straight quarter of growth in paid search spend in the U.S, up 12% year-over-year (YoY), as well as a 7% increase in spend for programmatic display.
Facebook continued its strong display growth, trouncing the market with a 40% increase YoY, in comparison to Google, who dropped 19%. Recent partnership changes for Yahoo and Bing are also expected to affect trends.
Key findings in the report:
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Search spend growth continues – U.S. paid search spend grew 12% YoY in Q3, with click-through rate (CTR) and cost-per-click (CPC) increases pointing to more expensive but efficient ads. Sophistication in mobile advertising may be a driving factor in the spend increase.
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Mobile search sees slower growth – Shifts in user behavior from tablets/desktop to mobile phones continued to lead to an increase in mobile search spend of 56% YoY. Tablets, similar to desktops, were relatively flat. This is due to the similar ways they're now managed by users, as well as increased sophistication and interest in mobile traffic. This resulted in 64% of mobile spend share devoted to phones and 36% share going to tablets.
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Yahoo Gemini brings change – The addition to the marketplace of Yahoo Gemini gives Yahoo the ability sell its own Mobile and Native ads into its own search results while giving it more control. This has implications to the data tracked in this report and tactics for marketers as it increases fragmentation and bifurcation in the market.
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Facebook outpaces Google as ad costs rise – Facebook continues to grow in spend, up 40% while Google display spend dropped 19%. The cost of Facebook ads also continued to climb, with eCPMs up 33% compared to last year.
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Programmatic display indicates shift to remarketing – When looking at display tactics in Q3, we see a slight shift toward remarketing ads (targeting ads to users who have visited a site before) when compared to last quarter, coming in at 53% of spend. This is a brief stabilization and a 50:50 mix of remarketing versus prospecting (look-a-like, contextual, custom targeting and reach).
- Additional insights by vertical – Breakouts by auto, travel, finance, retail and education are provided within the report, with finance as interesting outlier this quarter. It continues to see large drops in impressions, down 57% due to interest rates and demand, while also seeing strong growth of 130% in CTR.
"While Google still owns the majority of display spend, Facebook is quickly catching up," said Will Margiloff, CEO of IgnitionOne. "And with Facebook's debut of Atlas and Google's response of Custom Match, it's clear that these two heavyweight champs intend to keep going at each other in the ring like Ali and Frazier. It's only a matter of time before we find ourselves with another Thrilla in Manila on our hands – neither of these players is going down without a fight."
Digital marketing figures are released quarterly by IgnitionOne, which manages more than $1.5 billion in digital spend and tracks over $30 billion in revenue for its customers. This is the longest continuously running quarterly report on digital marketing trends and is the latest in a series from IgnitionOne, reviewing trends across the online advertising landscape. This and previous quarterly reports can be downloaded in full at http://www.ignitionone.com/thought-leadership/.
About IgnitionOne
IgnitionOne is a global marketing cloud leader. The company's Digital Marketing Suite (DMS), with a powerful customer data management platform (DMP) at its core, simplifies life for marketers by providing an integrated suite of solutions that significantly improve digital marketing performance across all devices. The DMS encompasses algorithmic media management across channels such as search, programmatic display, mobile, email and social; advanced data management; user scoring, lead optimization and website personalization. With a global footprint of over 450 employees in 17 offices across 10 countries, IgnitionOne is one of the largest independent marketing technology companies in the world.
IgnitionOne currently scores over 300 million users monthly in 75 countries and powers more than $30 billion in revenue each year for leading brands, including General Motors, CenturyLink, Bridgestone, La Quinta and Fiat, as well as advertising agencies such as 360i, GroupM and iProspect.
For more information, please visit http://www.ignitionone.com, follow the company on Twitter @ignitionone or visit the blog at http://www.digitalmarketingsuite.com.