Paid search remains the dominant digital advertising channel in 2019

A new study shows that paid search remains the top digital advertising channel for advertisers' budgets and outperforms other advertising channels. Paid search accounted for 39% of total advertiser budgets, according to the Marin Software State of Digital Advertising 2019 report. The data in the report was collected from more than 450 B2B and B2C digital marketing professionals in the US and UK.

Although paid search is by far the dominant advertising channel, advertisers are spending more on other channels than they were last year. Social media ads represent the second highest percentage of advertiser budgets (18%), followed by display ads (16%) on the web. Ad spending on Instagram in particular is on the rise, but the study found that the increase in ad spending on this platform is not a result of advertisers spending less on other social media ads.

Instead, significant spending on Instagram ads comes from increasing additional budget rather than diverting ad dollars from elsewhere. According to the study, 60% of respondents plan to increase spending on Amazon advertising over the next year.

Additionally, 55% of respondents say they started using Amazon Ads because they see it as a significant growth opportunity. When asked about their goals with Amazon advertising, one in four respondents said they were looking to increase purchases at the lower end of the funnel. On the other hand, the study found that Google is the most trusted publisher among advertisers - 98% rated Google 4 or 5 (out of 5) on the trust index.

84% of survey respondents who use paid search currently use or plan to use Google's new responsive search ads. 65% say their company's use of shoppable images in search will increase in 2019. 32% say video is the most effective form of social advertising, followed by display ads (26%), Instagram Stories at 23 percent and slide ads at 19 percent.

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