The digital advertising landscape continues to evolve at a rapid pace, with significant shifts in cost and performance across major platforms. Our latest data analysis reveals critical insights that marketers need to consider when allocating their Q2 budgets.
Key Takeaways from February 10-23, 2025
The interactive dashboard below provides a comprehensive view of recent media buying performance across major advertising channels. A few notable trends stand out:
Google Generic Search Costs Surging
Google Generic Search shows the most dramatic cost increases with CPM up by 45.60% and CPC up by 20.15%. This significant price inflation suggests increasing competition for search inventory, potentially making this channel less cost-effective despite its traditional strength in capturing high-intent traffic.
Meta Dominates Budget Allocation
Meta continues to command the largest share of advertising budgets at 47.86%, despite modest CPM increases (3.38%) and declining conversion rates (-4.92%). This suggests marketers may be over-relying on Meta's reach while not fully optimizing for performance.
Pinterest: The Undervalued Performer
The most striking performance comes from Pinterest, showing an impressive 73.9% increase in conversion rates alongside an 8.92% decrease in CPC and a substantial 26.02% drop in CPM. Despite this stellar performance, Pinterest receives only 0.31% of budget allocation – potentially representing a significant missed opportunity for many advertisers.
Discovery Platforms Show Cost Efficiency
Both Outbrain and Criteo demonstrate significant cost decreases (CPM down 14.40% and 13.28% respectively), though Outbrain shows concerning conversion rate declines (-7.46%). These platforms may offer value for upper-funnel awareness campaigns where immediate conversion isn't the primary goal.
Interactive Analysis
Explore the interactive dashboard below to dive deeper into the data. Click on any channel or metric to see detailed comparisons and insights, or use the filters to focus on specific platform categories or performance trends.
Methodology note: This analysis is based on sampled data from a representative portion of Admetrics' customer base. Budget share refers to the distribution across listed channels only. Individual results may vary based on industry, targeting, and creative quality.
Strategic Implications
Based on these findings, marketers should consider:
- Reassessing Google Search Investments: With rapidly increasing costs, ensure your Google Search campaigns are highly optimized and focused on your most profitable keywords.
- Exploring Pinterest Opportunities: The platform's combination of decreasing costs and dramatically improving conversion rates merits testing a larger budget allocation.
- Optimizing Meta Campaigns: Given Meta's dominant budget share but declining conversion effectiveness, scrutinize campaign performance and consider reallocating budget to better-performing channels.
- Leveraging Discovery Networks Strategically: The lower CPMs on platforms like Outbrain and Taboola make them attractive for brand awareness, though conversion-focused campaigns may need additional optimization.
What trends are you seeing in your own media buying efforts? Have you found success with any particular channels? Share your experiences in the comments below.
