Throughout 2020 advertisers upped their use of Google Discovery, such that by the final quarter of the year, the adoption of Google Discovery campaigns was 73% higher than it was during Q1. This is per a recent report [download page] from Tinuiti.
In Google’s words, Discovery campaigns are served “across the YouTube Home and Watch Next feeds… and the Gmail Promotions and Social tabs”. They also appear in the Google mobile app and can be targeted based on custom intent audiences, remarketing and in-market behavior. While launched in beta in 2019, Google only made them available to all advertisers in May 2020.
In an analysis of its own anonymized advertiser data, Tiniuti’s report shows that the increase in active Google Discovery advertisers throughout the year started out somewhat slowly, growing 10% between Q1 and Q2. However, following the mass rollout, by Q3 there were 51% more active advertisers launching Discovery campaigns than Q1, culminating in Q4 with close to three-quarters more advertisers launching this kind of campaign that reach audiences across the Google Discover feed, YouTube and Gmail.
RLSA, Customer Match and Similar Audience
Phones accounted for an estimated two-thirds (67.4%) of US Google paid search clicks in Q4 2020 per recent Merkle data, and they accounted for a similar share (69%) in Tinuiti’s study.
Looking at RLSA (Remarketing Lists for Search Ads), Tinuiti’s report indicates that RLSA’s share of paid search clicks dropped to 7% on phones, from 11% during the year-earlier period. RLSA’s share of paid search clicks was higher on tablets (10%) and desktops (11%).
Paid search clicks attributed to Customer Match, which is based on lists of customer emails, phone numbers and/or physical addresses, accounted for about 3% of traffic. This share was fairly standard across tablets (3.1%), phones and desktops (3.4% each).
In comparison to RLSA and Customer Match, the share of Google paid search clicks attributed to Similar Audiences in Q4 was noticeably higher across devices. Similar Audiences represented 17% share of paid search clicks on both phones and tablets, and 13% on desktops.
For more details, the full report can be found here.
About the Data: Findings are based on anonymized performance data from Google programs under Tinuiti management, with annual Google ad spend under management totaling $700 million. All figures are based on same-client growth.
