The overall cost per click fell from $0.75 to $0.72 quarter over quarter (QoQ), and click-through rates (CTRs) rose from 2.91% to 2.97% during the second quarter in 2019, according to data released this week.

Marin Software’s Q2 2019 Digital Benchmark Report, an aggregate of search, mobile and social-performance data from its customers, shows advertisers are seeing better engagement rates at lower costs, at least for global search campaigns.

The CPCs dropped across all industries, but retail and travel saw the lowest this quarter, $0.43 and $0.46, respectively. Education saw the highest price: $3.31.

Healthcare also saw a sharp drop, with the lowest CPCs in five quarters to $2.67.

As the healthcare industry focuses more on consumer needs, advertising shifts to brand awareness and customer satisfaction. This shift, per Marin, helps healthcare marketers find better value for clicks.

As for Google Shopping, the ecommerce ad unit continues to take much of the ad spend. Shopping ads represented 37% of total search spend share.

Amazon Sponsored Brands, a keyword targeted ad that lets brands promote multiple products or titles with a custom headline and logo, appear in Amazon search results, driving customers directly to a product detail page or Amazon Store.

Sponsored Brands showed 13% QoQ growth in sales and impressions, with a 17% rise in CPCs.

Overall, Amazon-led ecommerce click volume rose 25% in the quarter, compared with the prior quarter, but at a slightly higher CPC, about 11%.

Advertisers find bargains harder to come by in paid social. CPCs rose from $0.21 to $0.28 QoQ while CTRs have dropped from 1.58% to 1.27%.

Similar to other reports, Facebook’s lead ad adoption rose by 153% YoY, as more advertisers seek to boost new customer acquisition. Its platform, Instagram, also continues to grow, capturing 19% of social ad spend and accounting for 45% of total spend on the platform during second-quarter 2019.

The benchmark report notes features like Instagram Story Links and Highlights keep advertisers coming back to reach people on the social platform, as Instagram slowly becomes more of a direct selling tool.

Despite CTRs nearly the same as the Instagram Feed, advertisers should realize the lower cost of Instagram Stories.

Google’s focus on search, metrics and advertising for mobile games and apps led the company on Wednesday to introduce a series of features across AdMob. They measure and connect app publishers and advertisers with consumers across Search, Play, YouTube and millions of sites and apps across the company's networks.

The AdMob open ads format for developers serving Google ads lets game publishers connect with users as they wait for the app to load. It now includes ad placement tests, smart segmentation, a feature announced earlier this year, allowing brands to monetize players unlikely to make purchases in their app, and more metrics.

The new automated AdMob Insights feature provides alerts to developers’ dashboards, starting with anomaly detection, which will automatically identify significant fluctuations in key metrics, like eCPM, impression volume, or revenue.

The beta for Insights is live.

The reports are in the form of a card on the AdMob homepage dashboard. It detects anomalies in the past seven days. Publishers can click through to see the app dashboard.

Currently, only one anomaly per app per day, and five anomalies total per developer serve up. The idea, per Google, is not to overwhelm users. It will serve key performance indicators Google has tracked in AdMob, such as impressions, revenue, match rate, ad requests, and eCPM.

All this allows developers to quickly fix ad units that are under-performing or learn best practices from ad units that are over-performing. New user metrics will also launch to assist developers in understanding how much revenue they’re making across in-app purchases and ads, how many daily active users their apps have, and how long player sessions are lasting to create the best possible balance between monetizing the ads and the user experience.

The announcements made today during the Think Games at ChinaJoy, an entertainment conference for game developers in Shanghai, will rollout globally to the U.S. and other countries this year.

For app campaign advertisers, there’s Discover, Google’s feed in app campaigns. It was formally known as Universal App Campaigns and uses machine learning to recommend new content to more than 800 million monthly active users. App ads in Discover initially were served in the U.S., but by the end of 2019, will expand to Malaysia, South Africa, India, Pakistan, Canada, Brazil, Japan and Indonesia.

Google also offers YouTube Search ads, so advertisers can serve messages at the top of YouTube mobile search results, and Google display In-stream ads, which are skippable video ads that play before, during, or after a video runs.

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Beginning next month, Facebook plans to begin updating Page posts and ads on mobile to match the look and feel of the new design it debuted earlier in the year.

The update will include shortening visible primary text from seven to three lines, after which users will be prompted to click to view additional text.

It will also include reducing the maximum media height for photos and videos from a 2:3 to 4:5 aspect ratio.

The changes are intended to make the appearance of feed ads and page posts more consistent across Facebook’s family of apps, and generate longer-term value for ad partners.

While the updates will automatically apply to posts and ads on Facebook mobile News Feed within the next month, the company is recommending advertisers begin to use reduced primary text and shorter media height for feed ads.

Separately, Facebook plans to remove some options to its Business Manager, which it has identified as outdated or infrequently used by businesses.

For example, the social giant is removing several options related to older song titles, albums or games.

These changes are not expected to impact the vast majority of advertisers. However, when possible, Facebook said it will guide advertisers to options similar to ones that have been removed and should provide comparable performance.

Earlier this month, Facebook posted a profit of $1.99 per share versus an expected profit of $1.88 per share on revenue of $16.9 billion. The average revenue per user came in at $7.05.

In 2017, Conde Nast Britain reported its first loss in revenue since 1995. But it has regained profitability, according to its 2018 numbers.

WWD reports the publisher revealed a profit of around £2.7 million ($3.2 million) in 2018. In 2017, its losses amounted to £13.6 million. 

The division manages titles like British Vogue, GQ, Tatler and Glamour, which cut its print frequency from 12 issues to two in 2018. It was relaunched in March 2018 as a "beauty-first, mobile-first" millennial brand.

Like fellow titles GQ and Wired, Glamour has expanded its live events in the U.K., while launching a product sampling business the Glamour Beauty Club, reports WWD.

British Vogue reported an increase in its Audit Bureau of Circulation figure of 1.1% year-over-year, while Conde Nast Traveller saw an increase of 3.7% year-over-year. Tatler reported an increase of 1.2% year-over-year.

Each of the titles got a new editor, with Edward Enninful heading up British Vogue, Melinda Stevens taking over at CN Traveller and Richard Dennen becoming EIC at Tatler.

The company is concerned about how Brexit might impact its business, especially assuring “continuity for our import and export streams. The impact on the retail climate and consumer purchasing power remains uncertain.”

Backed by a crowdfunding campaign, Sony is creating a small, portable air conditioner that would be worn in the back, just below a person’s neck.

The device, called Reon Pocket, would slide into the pocket of a specially made undershirt and be controlled via mobile app through a Bluetooth connection.

The device, borne out of Sony’s First Flight crowdfunding platform, also can be used for heating.

“With Reon Pocket, you can feel comfortable in summer or winter at your own temperature,” states the product announcement by the development team in Japan.

The device is not slated to ship until next year, and initially only in Japan. For now, the portable air conditioner is living primarily in a company video.