Google Diversifies, Sees Display Spend Soar Over Facebook Despite Continued Drop in Search Spend

NEW YORK, Oct. 20, 2016 -- IgnitionOne, a global marketing cloud leader, today released its Q3 2016 Digital Marketing Report, demonstrating both continuing trends and changes in digital advertising metrics. Q3 saw the continued downward trend in U.S. paid search spend present over the past two quarters, down 4% year-over-year. Search spend on mobile continues to buck that trend amidst new changes from Google as the giant diversifies within the digital market and explores new monetization opportunities. Facebook programmatic display spend plummeted, down -22% this quarter ahead of FBX closing down in November, leaving room for Google to jump ahead, up 32% YoY.

Topics covered in the report include:

Search spend continues downward trend, Google diversifies and adds new monetization efforts
U.S. Google paid search continues the downward trend seen for the past two quarters, down -4% year-over-year (YoY). Meanwhile, the company has turned its attention ahead to future monetization efforts both within the Search space and in emerging technologies. Google’s latest change – Expanded Text Ads – did not make a much-anticipated splash this quarter, debuting with a whisper rather than a bang in terms of KPIs, despite great hype and publicity in the industry.

Mobile search spend up despite overall trend
Smartphone search spend continues to grow in the U.S. despite the overall downward trend of search, up 14% YoY. As mobile marketing grows more sophisticated, we’ll likely continue to see this number increase, but at a slower pace than in past quarters.

Google display spend increases, Facebook plummets
U.S. programmatic display saw an increase in spend of 23% YoY in Q3. The quarter also saw Facebook spend plummet, down -22% ahead of the elimination of FBX in November. Google spend, meanwhile, was up a strong 32% YoY.

Global Website and Score trends
Across a wide range of global clients, we saw an increase in website visitors in Q3 2016, up 8% YoY. Mobile activities grew with visitors up 23% and mobile interactions up 27%.

“We’re essentially in the ‘space age’ of digital marketing,” said Will Margiloff, CEO of IgnitionOne. “Traditional digital channels like search and display have achieved a level of stability that allows marketers to look to the proverbial sky in terms of innovations and new ways to improve results. As marketers attempt to push the envelope, it will be exciting to see what innovations work and which ones fall flat.”

Digital marketing figures based on client set 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 simplifies life for marketers through the use of a proprietary scoring algorithm and integrated marketing and advertising solutions. IgnitionOne offers a full-featured digital marketing platform which significantly improves performance across all devices and paid and owned channels throughout the customer journey. IgnitionOne allows marketers to better understand their customers and activate personalized 1:1 messaging across search, display, social, mobile, email, and website personalization.

With a global footprint of over 450 employees in 10 countries, IgnitionOne is one of the largest independent marketing technology companies in the world, currently scoring over 300 million users monthly in 75 countries and powering more than $60 billion in revenue each year for leading brands, including General Motors, CenturyLink, Bridgestone, La Quinta and Acer, as well as advertising agencies such as 360i, GroupM and Zenith Optimedia.

For more information, please visit http://www.ignitionone.com or follow the company on Twitter @ignitionone.

Contact: Rachel Jermansky, 212-334-9753 ext. 126