Google Display Rebounds, Outpacing Facebook in Growth from Thanksgiving Through End-of-Year, U.S. Paid Search Impressions See Impressive Rebound

IgnitionOne, a global marketing cloud leader, today released its Q4 2015 Digital Marketing Report, demonstrating continuing trends in digital advertising metrics. Q4 marked the fifth straight quarter of growth in paid search spend in the U.S, up 18% year-over-year (YoY), as well as an impressive 29% increase in spend for programmatic display.

From Thanksgiving weekend through the end of the year, Google came out ahead of Facebook in growth, in part due to a market shift toward contextual prospecting that is not available on the Facebook platform. Contextual prospecting includes ads shown to users who are already on pages with relevant content for the advertiser and have a high probability of specific product interest.

Key findings in the report:

• Google outpaces Facebook in spend growth, Thanksgiving through the end of 2015
  From Thanksgiving through end-of-year (November 26th – December 31st), Google surpassed Facebook in growth and conversions, seeing an increase of 37% in programmatic display advertising spend and a 34% increase in conversions. In comparison, Facebook saw an increase of 22% in growth and 17% in conversions. 
   

• Search spend sees impressive growth
  U.S. paid search has continued the consistent growth seen over the past several years, up a strong 18% YoY.

• U.S. paid search impressions rebound
  After steady drops seen in the past three out of four quarters, impressions are on the rise, up 7% YoY, an unexpected increase compared to Q3 2015, which saw them down by -21%. The overall increase is due in part to the rise in both Google Partner Network activity and impressions from Google shopping ads. 
   

• Google shopping ads create market shift 
  Google’s shift to shopping ads in a carousel format has led to an overall increase in impressions, but a decrease in CPC growth, particularly in mobile, which saw CPCs down by -21%.

• Thanksgiving weekend shopping trends 
  Cyber Monday continues to lead the charge in Thanksgiving shopping trends, seeing an impressive 107% increase in spend compared to baseline activity. 
   

• Automotive hits high gear in digital marketing spend
  Automotive was strong in Q4, with a 66% increase in spend and 58% increase in clicks YoY.

“Google had an impressive holiday season, finally outpacing Facebook,” said Will Margiloff, CEO of IgnitionOne. “Facebook has trounced Google in terms of growth over the past few quarters, but it’s clear that these two giants are well-matched. Both are evolving quickly to keep up with one another, and while Facebook is here to play, Google is clearly just as ready to defend its turf – especially as contextual prospecting gains more popularity.”

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.