Insights
#POV

Paid Social Trends 2018 Q1

Download now

Coming on the heels of a strong holiday season, Q1 2018 still managed to be a winning quarter for paid social. Overall, spend and efficiency are both up, and brands continue to see strong performance, including conversion on non-reach objectives.

Paid social is off to a strong start in 2018. Even coming of the traditionally inflated numbers of the Q4 holiday season, Q1 spend and performance figures bode well for this ever-evolving channel and the advertisers who know how to use it to their advantage. Learn more about the overall trends and platform-by-platform details in iProspect’s Quarterly Paid Social Trends Report for Q1 2018.

Selected key insights from the Q1 2018 report include:

  • Spend is up YoY. Spend was up  48% year over year (YoY) and—not surprisingly—down 46% quarter over quarter (QoQ). Snap, however, saw a QoQ increase of 38%.

  • Platforms continue to make newsworthy updates. Q1 featured 120 notable changes across most platforms. In addition, Facebook, Inc. made major security changes in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica incident.

  • Facebook continues to deliver value. The Facebook family of apps and services continues to be a strong driver of traffic and direct response performance metrics with Q1 investment up 99% YoY.

  • Facebook conversion remains strong. At 7.4% Facebook’s Q1 conversion rate was down QoQ, but it was still up compared to Q3 2017 (4.71%).

  • CPM is up 40% YoY, but efficiency is still high. Value was especially strong on the Mobile News Feed where CPM remained below $4.

  • CPC down QoQ, but up YoY. After the holidays, cost-per-click (CPC) fell to $.43 from $.69 in Q4. YoY, however, CPC increased 48%, which was offset by a continued increase in CTR.

  • Advertisers increase focus on non-reach objectives. More than half of total Q1 spend on Facebook, Inc. was on campaigns with direct response objectives.

  • Video has a strong showing. Video investment made up 53% of total spend across Facebook, Inc., and video spend was up 13% QoQ and 11% YoY.

 

Download the Full Report for more details about what's going on in the paid social landscape.

Header image for Paid Social Trends Report 2018 Q1

Download "Paid Social Trends 2018 Q1"