Global Facebook ad spend up by 50%

Quarterly spend on Facebook advertising increased 51% year-on-year (YOY) in Q2 2014 according to the latest data from Kenshoo.

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 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.

Take a look at this infogrpahic from Kenshoo which supports their latest findings: