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Spend benchmarks for financial services companies
Similar to other industries, financial services companies saw larger mean increases from Q4 to Q1 (39% growth) compared to the prior year (27% growth) for airline spend. Companies should expect these trends to continue. Placing greater scrutiny on business travel, implementing tighter travel spend policies, adopting travel management software, and encouraging the use of lower-cost airlines can help keep costs down.
In addition, companies in the financial services sector for all segments saw a sizable Q4 to Q1 12.9% increase in advertising spend compared to a year earlier, when there was a 6% reduction in advertising spend. The macro situation was quite different a year ago and advertising teams were likely given the green light to return to 2022 spend levels. While companies may feel the need to “turn things back on” advertising-wise, it may be a good time for audits and potentially incremental approaches for increasing advertising spend.
For specific vendor spending across financial services companies, there was a significant change in the number of companies spending on Anthropic, a more affordable per-seat AI offering whose quality has gotten closer to OpenAI’s GPT-4 model.
Small SMBs
Median card and AP spend
Change in mean card spend (Q1 24 vs Q4 23)
Small SMBs in the financial services industry were unique in that every single top area of card spend increased from Q4 to Q1. Typically a segment based on company size saw a mix of increases and decreases in spend across categories.
Shift in card spend over time
Small SMBs in the financial industry were able to keep advertising spend at slightly reduced levels relative to other spend areas.
Fastest-growing software vendors
Tax and AI software vendors saw strong growth relative to Q4, mirroring trends seen in other industries such as consulting and professional services and tech companies.
Vendor | Change in count of customers transacting on Ramp cards from Q4 23 | Mean card spend |
|---|---|---|
Tax1099 | 780.0% | $216 |
Anthropic | 358.3% | $75 |
Checkr | 24.1% | $345 |
Fireflies.ai | 20.5% | $317 |
Microsoft Office/Azure | 19.4% | $1,544 |
Zendesk | 12.8% | $2,322 |
Jetbrains | 12.2% | $397 |
Docusign | 11.8% | $682 |
Linear | 10.9% | $531 |
Canva | 10.6% | $96 |
Large SMBs
Median card and AP spend
Large SMBs in the financial sector were one of the only segments which saw decreased median card spend from Q4 to Q1.
Change in mean card spend (Q1 24 vs Q4 23)
Large SMBs saw a slightly lower increase in mean airline card spend from Q4 to Q1 than small SMBs. Large SMBs were also able to reduce mean lodging expenses despite the increase in travel suggested by higher mean airline spend.
Shift in card spend over time
Large SMB advertising spend as a share of total spend looked to return to normal levels after Q4. Cloud computing seems to have leveled out at a slightly higher share of total transactions.
Biggest expenses
Large SMBs in the financial services industry saw strong growth in quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year mean advertising spend. In addition, there were across the board QoQ increases in mean card spend for all airlines.
Vendor | Q1 24 mean card spend | QoQ change | YoY change |
|---|---|---|---|
Facebook Ads | $145,034 | 18.3% | 88.1% |
Google Ads | $102,808 | 22.5% | -29.0% |
Amazon Web Services | $33,782 | 6.5% | 70.6% |
United Airlines | $14,806 | 70.5% | 44.6% |
Twilio | $13,321 | 40.8% | 38.0% |
Delta Air Lines | $11,888 | 38.1% | 1.9% |
American Airlines | $11,674 | 42.8% | 12.2% |
Google Cloud | $7,890 | -18.9% | 47.5% |
Linkedin Ads | $7,540 | 80.2% | 295.8% |
Jetblue | $7,182 | 41.1% | -14.5% |
Fastest-growing software vendors
Tax1099’s strength continued across verticals and company size segments to large SMBs in the financial services industry.
Vendor | Change in count of customers transacting on Ramp cards from Q4 23 | Mean card spend |
|---|---|---|
Tax1099 | 1266.70% | $425 |
Anthropic | 340.0% | $40 |
Perplexity AI | 157.1% | $88 |
Carta | 133.3% | $5,439 |
LastPass | 60.0% | $1,190 |
Fireflies.ai | 58.3% | $232 |
Alchemy | 55.6% | $3,526 |
Lucid Software | 40.0% | $192 |
Descript | 36.4% | $179 |
QR Code Generator | 36.4% | $157 |
Spend benchmarks for healthcare and biotech companies
Healthcare across all company size segments saw quarterly spend grow at a reduced rate compared to other industries. Also, the areas in which spend grew the most, like airlines (21%), represent a much smaller percentage of total spend (3%) compared to other industries like tech (11%).
Healthcare and biotech were the only industries that saw quarter-over-quarter growth in average spend in the “General merchandise” category (10%). This category is a catchall for upstream and downstream long-tail and operational spend for healthcare and biotech companies. The average spend in this category was small, reflecting a large number of specialized vendors. The 10% quarter-over-quarter gain does not appear to be seasonal, as Q4 2022 to Q1 2023 saw a 7% reduction in average spend.
Having a tightly controlled procurement process and implementing procurement automation solutions can help companies react to higher prices and costs for categories like general merchandise.
Small SMBs
Median card and AP spend
Median card and AP spend for small SMBs have seen modest increases year over year and have less variance between quarters than other industries.
Change in mean card spend (Q1 24 vs Q4 23)
The quarterly increase in mean card spend for general merchandise and reduction in medical expenses are unique to healthcare and biotech small SMBs compared to similarly sized companies in other industries. The increase in mean airline card spend was about average across all industries in this company size segment.
Shift in card spend over time
Small SMBs in the healthcare and biotech industry seem to be increasing SaaS/software spend as a share of total spend. While Q1 spending in software generally increases relative to Q4 typically due to contract renewals, the year-over-year trend suggests higher SaaS/software spend for this cohort is a trend.
Biggest expenses
HubSpot has a strong hold on this segment. Small SMBs in healthcare also saw a divergence in growth and reductions between advertising platforms. The decrease in quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year spend on Google versus the clear increase in Facebook suggests that Google spend is being shifted to Facebook. This is further supported by advertising spend being somewhat constant as a percent of total spend in the previous graph.
Vendor | Q1 24 mean card spend | QoQ change | YoY change |
|---|---|---|---|
Facebook Ads | $57,521 | 22.2% | 103.9% |
Google Ads | $38,250 | -16.3% | -21.1% |
Amazon Web Services | $8,933 | 21.7% | 118.1% |
Upwork | $6,162 | -3.2% | -12.6% |
UPS | $5,265 | -15.9% | 52.0% |
Indeed | $5,142 | 3.4% | 51.3% |
Apple | $4,819 | -28.4% | 8.8% |
Amazon | $4,708 | 11.1% | 21.8% |
Delta Air Lines | $3,721 | 25.5% | 12.1% |
HubSpot | $3,658 | 31.1% | 34.8% |
Fastest-growing software vendors
RingCentral and HubSpot stand out with their high growth and high mean card spend relative to small SMBs in other sectors. Tax1099 continues to be the go-to option for tax prep across all company-size segments and verticals.
Vendor | Change in count of customers transacting on Ramp cards from Q4 23 | Mean card spend |
|---|---|---|
Tax1099 | 750.0% | $161 |
RingCentral | 25.9% | $1,141 |
Checkr | 23.3% | $885 |
HubSpot | 21.4% | $3,824 |
Canva | 20.0% | $157 |
Lucid Software | 47.1% | $169 |
Zapier | 19.6% | $497 |
Microsoft Office/Azure | 16.7% | $2,293 |
DocuSign | 14.4% | $813 |
Calendly | 13.9% | $312 |
Large SMBs
Median card and AP spend
Median AP spend has shown a steady upward trajectory since Q2 2023 for healthcare and biotech large SMBs, while median card spend is flat. This suggests that large SMBs in healthcare have fewer seasonal or unexpected long-tail expenses and generally more purchases go through invoicing or procurement processes.
Change in mean card spend (Q1 24 vs Q4 23)
Large SMBs in healthcare were one of the only segments which saw quarterly increases in professional services. In addition, large SMBs saw a decrease in medical mean card spend similar to small SMBs.
Shift in card spend over time
General merchandise has seen a large increase relative to total spend.
Biggest expenses
The quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year increase in Upwork suggests that much of the 20%+ gain in professional services spend can be attributed to online hiring platforms rather than traditional agencies.
Vendor | Q1 24 mean card spend | QoQ change | YoY change |
|---|---|---|---|
Google Ads | $51,853 | 15.3% | 31.3% |
Facebook Ads | $50,424 | 18.8% | 96.4% |
Henry Schein | $24,508 | N/A | 29.9% |
Amazon Web Services | $18,202 | -5.5% | 24.9% |
Upwork | $9,998 | 34.7% | 48.3% |
Twilio | $7,756 | 1.6% | 41.8% |
Amazon | $7,141 | -8.1% | 2.1% |
Apple | $5,863 | 0.5% | 0.3% |
Indeed | $5,702 | -3.1% | 18.2% |
HubSpot | $5,588 | 12.4% | 2.4% |
Fastest-growing software vendors
Monday.com, typically correlated with headcount spend, saw strong quarterly growth.
Vendor | Change in count of customers transacting on Ramp cards from Q4 23 | Mean card spend |
|---|---|---|
Tax1099 | 866.7% | $219 |
Namecheap | 128.6% | $293 |
QR Code Generator | 90.9% | $188 |
Jetbrains | 50.0% | $634 |
monday.com | 50.0% | $1,593 |
Amazon Business Prime | 48.1% | $682 |
WP Engine | 35.0% | $798 |
Sentry | 26.5% | $479 |
SurveyMonkey | 25.0% | $768 |
Microsoft Office/Azure | 23.3% | $1,697 |
Google Storage | 18.8% | $33 |
Spend benchmarks for manufacturing companies
Manufacturers across all company sizes saw lower quarter-on-quarter increases in mean spend on categories like airlines (16.9%) and lodging (13.7%) compared to other industries. These categories also represent a smaller proportion of total spend compared to other industries.
Importantly, manufacturing companies were able to keep quarter-on-quarter increases in mean spend to modest levels in the general merchandise (4.5%) and “other” (0.3%) categories, which represented about 60% of total spend in Q1.
Small SMBs
Median card and AP spend
While median card spend was slightly lower year over year, median AP spend has more than tripled for small SMBs in manufacturing. Manufacturing tends to have higher capex spend relative to things like long-tail expenses, which is reflected in the ratio of AP spend vs card spend.
Change in mean card spend (Q1 24 vs Q4 23)
Small SMBs in manufacturing saw a lower-than-average increase in airline mean card spend relative to small SMBs in other industries. This suggests they may be taking shorter, less expensive routes or shifting more spend to lower-cost airlines, or taking more action to contribute to the lower quarter-on-quarter increase.
Shift in card spend over time
Biggest expenses
Digi-key stands out as having strong quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth. Digi-key is unique to small SMBs in manufacturing as it is an electronic components distributor. Similarly, McMaster-Carr only appeared within the biggest expenses for small SMB manufacturers.
Vendor | Q1 24 mean card spend | QoQ change | YoY change |
|---|---|---|---|
Google Ads | $15,446 | 9.8% | 42.3% |
Facebook Ads | $15,082 | -28.2% | 48.6% |
The Home Depot | $7,938 | 2.7% | 16.9% |
Delta Air Lines | $7,030 | 7.3% | 103.1% |
Digi-Key | $6,948 | 56.7% | 54.0% |
United Airlines | $6,341 | 6.2% | 75.2% |
McMaster-Carr | $5,905 | 13.3% | -6.9% |
Amazon | $5,489 | 7.7% | -2.8% |
American Airlines | $4,231 | 16.3% | 62.3% |
Uline | $3,672 | 11.4% | 15.0% |
Fastest-growing software vendors
No tax software was seen on the top vendors for Q1 2024. This suggests that small SMBs in manufacturing rely on external tax firms the most. GitHub was also an outlier as one of the fastest-growing software vendors compared to other segments and industries. This suggests that small SMBs are hiring more software engineers.
Vendor | Change in count of customers transacting on Ramp cards from Q4 23 | Mean card spend |
|---|---|---|
GoDaddy | 29.7% | $515 |
HubSpot | 29.2% | $2,350 |
Google Domains | 22.7% | $158 |
Github | 20.0% | $434 |
Microsoft Office/Azure | 16.7% | $1,255 |
Amazon Web Services | 16.7% | $6,281 |
Zoom | 16.4% | $897 |
Mailchimp | 14.8% | $374 |
OpenAI | 13.2% | $432 |
RingCentral | 11.1% | $1,466 |
Large SMBs
Median card and AP spend
Large SMBs have seen decreasing median card spend since Q2 2023.
Change in mean card spend (Q1 24 vs Q4 23)
Large SMBs in manufacturing had a far lower percentage change in mean card airline spend compared to peers in other industries. The decrease in mean card spend for government services suggests that Q4 may be a high spend quarter for these expenses due to end-of-year seasonality.
Shift in card spend over time
Both the lower-than-average gains and losses in mean card spend by category, and the steadiness of the percentage of total spend by category, suggest that large SMB manufacturers have more predictable and forecastable spend trends within a year.
Biggest expenses
The decrease in year-on-year mean card spend for Amazon Web Services, and the increase in year-on-year spend on Dell, may suggest some workloads being away from cloud computing services in favor of self-hosted options. However, this is unclear given that Dell is popular for personal computers as well as server hardware.
Vendor | Q1 24 mean card spend | QoQ change | YoY change |
|---|---|---|---|
Facebook Ads | $27,440 | -32.3% | 19.0% |
Google Ads | $22,437 | 3.3% | -1.6% |
The Home Depot | $10,254 | -4.7% | 1.9% |
Amazon | $7,620 | 16.4% | 22.3% |
Airbnb | $7,466 | 48.4% | 18.0% |
Dell | $5,611 | 30.3% | 23.1% |
Delta Air Lines | $5,492 | 0.1% | -30.8% |
Amazon Web Services | $5,418 | 10.6% | -67.0% |
UPS | $4,975 | 41.3% | -1.9% |
PayPal | $4,969 | -12.2% | 9.4% |
Fastest-growing software vendors
Four of the 10 top growing software products for large SMB manufacturers were for taxes.
Vendor | Change in count of customers transacting on Ramp cards from Q4 23 | Mean card spend |
|---|---|---|
Tax1099 | 950.00% | $281 |
Aatrix Software | 257.1% | $392 |
monday.com | 64.3% | $1,641 |
Grammarly | 41.7% | $192 |
Semrush.com | 21.4% | $597 |
Paymentus | 18.8% | $41 |
OpenAI | 18.0% | $211 |
Figma | 17.6% | $288 |
Autodesk | 17.1% | $1,835 |
GoDaddy | 15.9% | $498 |
Spend benchmarks for consulting and professional services companies
Overall median spending trends across all segments followed expected quarter-on-quarter trends of general spend increases. The significant rise in median AP spend for small SMBs stands out as a notable outlier, increasing by almost 50%.
For category spend, professional services and consulting companies across all segments saw a greater change in travel spend relative to all sectors and company sizes:
All sectors: Year-over-year total spend increase of 36.3% for airlines and 10.6% for lodging.
YoY change in card transaction volume for Airlines | YoY change in card transaction volume for Lodging | |
|---|---|---|
Small SMB | 42.6% | 18.7% |
Large SMB | 47.9% | 6.8% |
Mid-market | 61.4% | 14.0% |
Small SMBs
Median card and AP spend
To frame the following graphs, here is an overview of median spend by cards and accounts payable (AP). Q1 24 AP spend was up 48.8% compared to Q1 23. This suggests both a consolidation of larger spend items into Ramp’s AP features and an overall increase in total spend for small SMBs in the consulting and professional services industry.
Change in mean card spend (Q1 2024 vs Q4 2023)
While lodging increased across all segments, small SMB saw the largest increase in percentage terms, suggesting that these companies are more likely to drastically lower travel spend in Q4 and then increase spending to normal or above levels in Q1.
Shift in card spend over time
Two notable trends in year-over-year share of spend for small SMBs are the drastic decrease in advertising spend as a share of total spend as well as the steady increase in SaaS. After clear reductions in SaaS spend across 2022 and into 2023, the slow but steady increase could support a narrative around SaaS recovery among small SMBs.
Biggest expenses
Facebook Ads saw a large drop year over year as well as quarter over quarter. For small SMBs across all industries, there was a 6.3% increase from Q4 2023 to Q1 2024 and a year-over-year increase of 28.9%. This suggests that small SMB companies in this segment have discovered new digital customer acquisition channels, or have reduced spend on that channel. Since there hasn’t been a large noticeable uptick in other advertisers, the data does not suggest small SMBs have replaced Facebook with other existing digital advertising channels.
Takeaway: As you benchmark your advertising spend, Facebook might be a good first target. Work with your marketing team or agency to audit spend and see where there may be waste. Some specific things to ask your team:
- Ensure conversion tracking is set up properly.
- Pause or audit campaigns where the cost per conversion is not within your acquisition budget.
- Determine whether there are underproductive campaigns where the spend can be transferred to more productive ones.
- Work with their Meta account manager to find opportunities to make campaigns more efficient.
- Speak directly to peers on how they have cut spend in this area.
Vendor | Q1 24 mean card spend | QoQ change | YoY change |
|---|---|---|---|
Google Ads | $15,315 | 13.9% | -7.0% |
Amazon Web Services | $11,252 | -7.1% | 74.5% |
Facebook Ads | $9,573 | -65.8% | -79.9% |
Upwork | $3,594 | 7.2% | -35.3% |
HubSpot | $3,367 | -13.9% | 11.3% |
United Airlines | $3,178 | 29.8% | 4.1% |
American Airlines | $3,163 | 21.6% | 42.7% |
The Home Depot | $3,149 | 33.2% | -17.0% |
Airbnb | $3,002 | -19.7% | -14.6% |
Apple | $2,784 | 10.6% | 26.3% |
Fastest-growing software vendors
Website-hosting platforms like Namecheap and GoDaddy are growing fast in this segment, suggesting many small SMBs are investing more in these business growth tools. Small SMBs are also integrating AI into their processes with OpenAI emerging as the top AI vendor of choice.
Vendor | Change in count of customers transacting on Ramp cards from Q4 23 | Mean card spend |
|---|---|---|
Grammarly | 43.8% | $305 |
Namecheap | 35.7% | $213 |
Microsoft Office/Azure | 22.3% | $980 |
GoDaddy | 15.7% | $426 |
Zoom | 14.1% | $848 |
OpenAI | 11.6% | $405 |
Dropbox | 10.9% | $555 |
Checkr | 8.7% | $471 |
Figma | 7.7% | $385 |
SendGrid | 7.7% | $418 |
Large SMBs
Median card and AP spend
To frame the following graphs, here is an overview of median spend by cards and AP. Q1 2024 AP spend was up 48.8% compared to Q1 2023. Median card spend has been relatively flat year over year, with a 5% decrease since Q1 2023. Meanwhile, AP spend has steadily increased, with a year-on-year bump of 15%.
Change in mean card spend (Q1 2024 vs Q4 2023)
Similar to small SMBs, large SMBs in the consulting and professional services industry saw a large increase in airline spend over Q4 2023. Large SMBs saw a large quarterly increase (41%) in professional services spend, which reflects a similar trend to last year. This trend could be attributed to large SMBs relying on professional services to prepare for tax season. This increase was also seen between Q4 2022 to Q1 2023, where large SMBs saw a 46% jump in professional services spend.
Shift in card spend over time
Large SMBs also saw significant year-over-year reductions in advertising spend as a share of total spend. In absolute dollar terms, advertising spend was only 53% of its Q1 2023 amount. While the reasons behind this reduction are unclear, this strongly suggests that there is greater scrutiny being placed on advertising budgets.
Biggest expenses
Similar to small SMBs, large SMBs saw significant downward spend on Facebook advertising since last quarter and over the past year. However, the clear uptick in LinkedIn Ads spend suggests that these firms may have shifted some spend from Facebook to LinkedIn.
Vendor | Q1 24 mean card spend | QoQ change | YoY change |
|---|---|---|---|
Google Ads | $29,867 | -24.3% | -43.6% |
Facebook Ads | $25,472 | -18.3% | -43.5% |
Amazon Web Services | $25,420 | 8.3% | 28.6% |
Bill.com | $10,105 | 74.0% | 7.5% |
Linkedin Ads | $9,481 | 11.1% | 38.0% |
HubSpot | $8,332 | 71.7% | -1.2% |
PayPal | $7,450 | 2.4% | -40.9% |
Indeed | $4,975 | -21.1% | -55.5% |
Amazon | $4,911 | 6.3% | 11.8% |
United Airlines | $4,650 | 46.2% | 4.0% |
Fastest-growing software vendors
Tax1099 emerged as the breakout vendor with large SMBs in Q1, just in time for tax season. Amazon Business Prime also grew fast, suggesting large SMBs may be increasing their general merchandise spending.
Vendor | Change in count of customers transacting on Ramp cards from Q4 23 | Mean card spend |
|---|---|---|
Tax1099 | 975.0% | $425 |
Amazon Business Prime | 88.9% | $269 |
Arc | 55.6% | $1,178 |
SurveyMonkey | 47.1% | $893 |
JetBrains | 36.8% | $767 |
Grammarly | 35.3% | $269 |
Loom | 28.9% | $256 |
SquareSpace | 28.1% | $216 |
DocuSign | 23.7% | $1,067 |
Figma | 18.8% | $1,040 |
Mid-market
Median card spend
Total mean card spend saw a 7.2% jump quarter over quarter. This was more than twice the increase seen from Q4 2022 to Q1 2023 (3.5%). AP spend was excluded due to unexpected variance.
Change in mean card spend (Q1 2024 vs Q4 2023)
The quarterly change in average professional services and airline spend follows the same trend as other segments in the consulting and professional services industry. However, when compared to last year, mid-market companies had much different quarter-over-quarter changes. Between Q4 2022 and Q1 2023, average spend on airlines saw only a 14% increase compared to 28% between Q4 2023 to Q1 2024. In addition, quarterly change in professional services last year was -3% compared to +28% Q4 2023 to Q1 2024. While airline spend regularly picks up across all industries in Q1, this year-over-year jump suggests that increased prices may be a factor.
Shift in card spend over time
We can see that advertising as a share of total spend is less consistent quarter over quarter than other segments over the past year, but hasn’t seen a clear decline for mid-market companies in relative terms.
Biggest expenses
Also contrary to the trend for small and large SMBs, mid-market companies are spending more on Facebook and Google ads over the past year, but less on LinkedIn Ads. Hilton and Airbnb seem to be the big year-over-year winners for mid-market spend on lodging; average spend more than doubled compared to Q1 2023. Delta seems to have captured the majority of the expected quarterly increase in airline spend.
Vendor | Q1 24 mean card spend | QoQ change | YoY change |
|---|---|---|---|
Google Ads | $163,013 | -45.9% | 54.2% |
Facebook Ads | $74,834 | 8.1% | 44.9% |
UPS | $66,643 | -5.3% | 54.2% |
Amazon Web Services | $29,063 | 16.7% | 15.4% |
Linkedin Ads | $17,122 | -22.0% | -17.6% |
Indeed | $13,132 | 1.6% | 30.8% |
Hilton Hotels | $12,675 | 13.2% | 270.9% |
Amazon | $10,525 | 10.1% | 22.6% |
Airbnb | $9,469 | n/a | 141.7% |
Delta Air Lines | $9,396 | 40.2% | -1.2% |
Fastest-growing software vendors
Tax1099 has shown consistent growth across all segments for consulting and professional services companies. The market seems to have reacted well to the release of Tax1099’s AI Tax Assist offering. Riverside.fm is a standout for mid-market consulting and professional services companies but reinforces that more companies are investing in podcasting and video mediums for new marketing channels.
Vendor | Change in count of customers transacting on Ramp cards from Q4 23 | Mean card spend |
|---|---|---|
Tax1099 | 712.5% | $1,841 |
Riverside.fm | 200.0% | $161 |
Jetbrains | 100.0% | $2,493 |
Bluebeam | 100.0% | $1,821 |
Thnks | 80.0% | $1,216 |
Namecheap | 63.6% | $218 |
Apollo.io | 62.5% | $872 |
RingCentral | 55.6% | $1,425 |
Checkr | 33.3% | $1,829 |
WP Engine | 33.3% | $2,140 |
Spend benchmarks for tech companies
Tech companies of all sizes saw a 15% increase in quarterly mean spend on insurance. Compared to Q1 of 2023, the average spend on insurance is more than four times higher. While the more pronounced jump between Q4 2022 and Q1 2023 (49%) suggests seasonality, there have been >40% increases in mean spend for four of the last five quarters.
Besides the obvious remediation to curb insurance cost increases by increasing employee cost sharing, tech companies could focus more on network strategies. This includes utilizing narrow, high-performing networks, leveraging centers of excellence to address high-cost claims such as cancer and orthopedic cases, creating plans that direct patients to more affordable providers, and making renewed efforts to find effective navigation tools.
Mean advertising spend for tech companies continues its march upward. After an 18% increase in mean spend from Q3 to Q4 in 2023, Q1 mean advertising spend was more than 40% higher than the 2023 quarterly average.
Small SMBs
Median card and AP spend
After a small dip in Q4 2023 likely due to seasonality, small SMB software companies' median AP spend continued its upward trend.
Change in mean card spend (Q1 2024 vs Q4 2023)
Small SMB software companies were the only segment that saw a notable quarter-over-quarter increase in insurance across all company sizes and industries.
Shift in card sped over time
Advertising saw a large uptick in terms of share of spend. This may reflect shifting attitudes in the overall software industry as companies begin to reprioritize growth over efficiency.
Biggest expenses
While Google and LinkedIn saw solid year-over-year growth, Facebook continues to fail at vying for small SMB tech company ad spend. Small SMB tech companies appear to be lowering their overall spend on Apple products, likely MacBook Pros and MacBook Airs, potentially due to slower hiring paces in 2023 and less employee churn.
Vendor | Q1 24 mean card spend | QoQ change | YoY change |
|---|---|---|---|
Google Ads | $26,959 | 32.1% | 65.0% |
Amazon Web Services | $19,043 | 0.4% | 42.8% |
Twilio | $9,921 | 42.5% | 61.6% |
Google Cloud | $9,577 | -16.0% | 31.7% |
LinkedIn Ads | $7,763 | 4.7% | 108.7% |
Upwork | $6,006 | -2.0% | 35.4% |
Datadog | $4,797 | -10.7% | 43.9% |
Apple | $4,129 | -1.2% | -54.3% |
Vouch Insurance | $3,529 | -12.0% | -16.2% |
PayPal | $3,494 | -4.3% | 43.7% |
Fastest-growing software vendors
Anthropic continues to show strength in new customer acquisition across all industries. Ngrok, an application delivery platform for developers, joins this list of the fastest-growing vendors for the first time.
Vendor | Change in count of customers transacting on Ramp cards from Q4 23 | Mean card spend |
|---|---|---|
Anthropic | 357.4% | $178 |
Carta | 23.8% | $4,483 |
ngrok | 21.8% | $246 |
Twitter | 16.6% | $633 |
ElevenLabs | 13.4% | $461 |
Cloudflare | 13.0% | $903 |
Apollo.io | 11.5% | $1,177 |
Ashby | 22.6% | $1,226 |
Canva | 10.5% | $98 |
Mixpanel | 10.5% | $835 |
Large SMBs
Median card and AP spend
Large SMBs in the tech industry saw a reduction in median AP spend quarter over quarter. This suggests that budget tightening is not over for tech companies and that there may have been more churn in quarterly software spend as contracts were renewed at the end of the year.
Change in mean card spend (Q1 2024 vs Q4 2023)
Large SMBs had the highest percentage gain in quarter-over-quarter mean card spend on airlines across all company sizes in all industries.
Shift in card sped over time
Large SMBs followed small SMBs in increasing their advertising spend as a percentage of total spend.
Biggest expenses
Unlike with small SMBs, Facebook has seen the highest mean growth both quarter over quarter and year over year with large SMBs, among advertising companies. It now represents the highest average spend. This could suggest that success with Facebook advertising for tech companies relies on some amount of dependence on the stage of growth of the company. Also, Google Cloud stands out as a strong performer for cloud computing providers compared to other industries which typically favor Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure.
Vendor | Q1 24 mean card spend | QoQ change | YoY change |
|---|---|---|---|
Facebook Ads | $135,692 | 17.3% | 40.5% |
Google Ads | $104,066 | -0.1% | 62.4% |
Amazon Web Services | $45,822 | -0.2% | 2.8% |
Twilio | $15,165 | 5.1% | 33.6% |
LinkedIn Ads | $13,620 | 5.6% | 38.4% |
Google Cloud | $11,441 | 14.5% | -8.9% |
Amazon | $9,823 | 8.5% | 47.8% |
Bill.com | $9,389 | -3.8% | 5.3% |
Datadog | $9,063 | -0.7% | 34.6% |
FedEx | $7,539 | -4.2% | 35.5% |
Fastest-growing software vendors
While small tech SMBs preferred Apollo.io, a new go-to-market data provider, large SMBs seemed to continue to favor ZoomInfo.
Vendor | Change in count of customers transacting on Ramp cards from Q4 23 | Mean card spend |
|---|---|---|
Tax1099 | N/A | $437 |
Anthropic | 310.0% | $421 |
Lucid Software | 32.0% | $212 |
ZoomInfo | 29.3% | $11,070 |
Bitly | 25.6% | $175 |
Linear | 25.0% | $1,496 |
Donut | 23.3% | $792 |
Squarespace | 20.8% | $235 |
Twitter | 18.2% | $3,806 |
Descript | 10.5% | $835 |
Mid-market
Median card and AP spend
Change in mean card spend (Q1 2024 vs Q4 2023)
Shift in card sped over time
Mid-market companies did not see a shift to a higher percentage of total card spend on advertising relative to the whole. This could be due to higher-than-normal spend on airlines.
Biggest expenses
The year-on-year increases across all advertisers among the biggest expenses show that advertising is picking up across the board rather than focusing on a few areas.
Vendor | Q1 24 mean card spend | QoQ change | YoY change |
|---|---|---|---|
Google Ads | $151,346 | 4.4% | 12.4% |
Facebook Ads | $94,877 | -22.4% | 35.0% |
Amazon Web Services | $92,976 | -1.3% | 3.2% |
Microsoft Advertising | $27,774 | 14.8% | 13.6% |
LinkedIn Ads | $21,931 | 5.1% | 39.3% |
Omni Hotels | $19,719 | 41.4% | 36.5% |
CDW | $19,398 | -9.7% | -35.7% |
Google Cloud | $17,534 | 0.4% | 8.3% |
Twilio | $15,048 | 8.0% | 15.7% |
FedEx | $13,594 | -2.5% | -76.4% |
Fastest-growing software vendors
Vendor | Change in count of customers transacting on Ramp cards from Q4 23 | Mean card spend |
|---|---|---|
Tax1099 | 712.50% | $753 |
Anthropic | 281.8% | $101 |
ClickUp | 100.0% | $2,598 |
Amazon Business Prime | 45.5% | $411 |
apilayer | 38.1% | $396 |
NordVPN | 33.3% | $79 |
Harvest | 31.3% | $1,253 |
Avalara | 29.0% | $12,210 |
Carta | 27.3% | $13,856 |
Grammarly | 25.6% | $876 |
