• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, February 6, 2019

Advertisers spent five times more to advertise on Amazon’s platform in 2018 through Marin Software’s platform.

The number surfaced as one of the biggest takeaways from the Q4 2018 Digital Advertising Benchmark Report released Wednesday, said Wes MacLaggan, senior vice president of marketing at Marin Software.

“Their ad business, more than $10 billion in 2018, puts Google, Facebook and Amazon as the three channels that matter,” MacLaggan said.

Amazon's demand-side platform also provides “great” audience data that marketers can use, if an advertiser isn’t selling on the marketplace, he said.

MacLaggan said that many of the brands advertising on Amazon through Marin are new advertisers to the marketplace platform. 

Marin’s data also shows that advertisers spent about 10% more on search among its clients. The cost per click (CPC) per industry continues to fluctuate. Travel came in with the lowest global CPC in the fourth quarter at $0.45, followed by retail at $0.48.

Consumer confidence, strong economies, and greater competition contributed to higher CPCs in other sectors. Education had the highest CPC for the quarter at nearly $3.

Mobile took 36% of search spend share in retail and 41% of spend share across all verticals in the fourth quarter, among Marin’s clients. Overall it took 41% in the final quarter of the year, down from 43% in the third quarter in 2018.

Google Shopping Ads took 36% of search spending for all verticals. Shopping Ads remain retail advertisers’ unit of choice, but the percentage of spend remained flat from the third to fourth quarters.

In terms of social, Dynamic Product Ads captured 35% of total Facebook spend, signaling a shift to lower-funnel formats, per the findings.

Marketers, in the quarter, also spent more to advertise on Instagram. The company drew in 18% of total Facebook spend in the quarter, up from 15% YoY, with 34% of that spend allocated to Instagram Stories.