Search saw consistently higher clickthrough rates than social and retail media worldwide in the last year

Key stat: In Q2 2024, worldwide clickthrough rates (CTRs) for search was 1.63%, more than double that of social (0.66%) and quadruple that of retail media (0.39%), according to a July 2024 report by Skai.

Beyond the chart:

• Google’s rollout of AI-generated overviews in May may not have impacted CTRs. The feature, which populates answers to searches directly on the results page, makes it more difficult to measure search ad impressions or return on ad spend.
• US search ad spend will grow 11.1% this year, reaching $124.59 billion, according to our March 2024 forecast.

Use this chart: Digital advertisers can use this chart to benchmark the performance of their search, social, and retail media ads, and align their ad spend based on their marketing goals.

Related EMARKETER reports:

• US Search Ad Spending Benchmarks: Q3 2024 (Subscription required)
• Retail Media Search Forecast and Trends 2024 (Subscription required)

Methodology: Data is from the July 24 Skai "Q2 2024 Quarterly Trends Report." Information is based on $9 billion in ad spending over 5 quarters for over 1 trillion impressions and 14 billion clicks across multiple countries and industry categories running on the Skai platform on Google, Microsoft Advertising, Yahoo!, Yahoo! Japan, Baidu, Yandex, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Snapchat, Apple, Amazon, Walmart, Instacart, and Criteo. Analysis is based on Skai advertisers with 15 consecutive months of performance data.