2024 Q1

Industry spend benchmarks

Actionable data for finance leaders seeking to understand where to invest their financial resources
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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. 

Within our customer base, meals, travel, and entertainment tended to be higher, given the spillover of invoices from the Holiday season.
Greg O’Brien, CEO of Anomaly CPA

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%
Advertising spend increased QoQ in our line of work, given the amount of business owners interested in niche tax strategies to start off the new year.
Greg O’Brien, CEO of Anomaly CPA

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. 

Within our customer base, we have several clients that decreased total subscription spend in Q1, likely due to annual subscription audits.
Greg O’Brien, CEO of Anomaly CPA

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 spend 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
About this data: Insights are based on thousands of aggregated, anonymized transactions on Ramp cards and invoices paid through Ramp Bill Pay. For year-over-year comparisons, the sample size comprises customers who have been active with Ramp over that entire 12-month period. Quarter-over-quarter comparisons comprise customers who have been active with Ramp over the two quarters analyzed. Small SMBs represent companies with 1-24 employees. Large SMBs represent companies with 25-99 employees. Midmarket companies range from 100-999 employees. Expense categories for their transactions are based on merchant category codes provided by Visa. These and other report definitions are subject to change. Analysis is based solely on card and transaction data observable by Ramp, and should not be taken as an indication of a company's or Ramp’s business performance. Some data points were excluded to protect customer privacy.