Compared with the same period a year ago, social ad spend rose 50% in the last quarter of the year 2015.
The figures are based on Kenshoo’s analysis of more than 550 billion impressions, 11 billion clicks and $6 billion in advertiser spend made through its Infinity Suite. Rob Coyne, Kenshoo’s managing director for EMEA said that the changes in social ad types, how they are bought and how customers engage with them had led to a big impact on both spend and performance in the final quarter of 2015.
The enormous growth is was caused by the introduction of new ad types which were popularly used by retailers in their product seasonal campaigns along with other changes in the market last year.
Changes in bidding strategies also drove growth in the market. Facebook lead these strategies by introducing simpler bidding optimization processes and changing the definition of cost per click to make it easier for marketers to bid on off site clicks rather than social engagement clicks such as likes, comments and shares.
Instagram on the other hand also prompted to huge market growth by changing some of their strategies and allowed marketers of any size around the world to begin buying and managing Instagram ads on a self-service basis.
Impressions for social ads in the quarter fell but the click through rate (CTR) rose by 64% year on year – resulting in 30% more clicks and a 10% rise in CPC compared to the previous year.
“They have helped to make social clicks more valuable and disrupted previous trends in both CPC and CTR, with the greater competition amongst retailers during the holiday shopping season likely to have exacerbated the effects,” Coyne remarked.