Merkle’s Q3 Digital Marketing Report (DMR) highlights paid and organic search trends, Amazon ads, paid social, and display ads.
Based on the emerging trends, Q3 DMR demonstrates that marketers need to continue to be agile when planning as coronavirus pandemic influences consumer shopping behaviours. Increased consumers’ use of online shopping and the growth of ecommerce brought more new businesses into the digital space, which increased the competition in the space.
Additionally, the study found that more consumers shopped online as COVID-19 cases went up – retail performance grew. As a result, paid search CPC was up 41% year-over-year, with neither Google nor Microsoft immune to increases. Amazon Sponsored Products CPC was also up 43% YoY, while Sponsored Brands CPC jumped 76%. In terms of paid social, Facebook CPM increased 46%, and Instagram CPM increased 11%.
Interestingly, mobile drove 64% of organic search visits in the third quarter of this year, while paid search mobile click share set a new record of 72%. However, to compete for increasingly limited targeting tools, brands need to bid more aggressively.
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