This Week In Digital Advertising Data (October 18th 2024)

Let’s see what this week’s numbers say about online advertising, shall we?

  • Customer acquisition costs have been rising for retailers, but e-commerce marketers aren’t fazed. Indeed, e-commerce marketers around the world are more focused on acquiring new customers than any other strategic priority, according to research from Klaviyo. Based on a survey of more than 1,400 online retail executives around the world at retailers with more than $30 million in annual revenues and 250 employees, the results show that acquiring new customers is the top goal, ahead of driving repeat purchases with existing customers. To achieve these aims, e-commerce marketers have been increasingly spending on paid social marketing/ads (69%), programmatic advertising (65%), paid search (65%), email marketing (63%), and in-app marketing/push notifications (63%), per the report. At least half also report investment increases in a wide range of other channels, from influencer marketing to print ads and out-of-home. Among marketing tactics, the most commonly offered by e-commerce companies are discounts/sales (60%), product reviews (60%), quick checkout (55%), and personalization (54%), among others. As regards personalization, 7 in 10 respondents report investing more in collecting and leveraging data. The most common types of personalization data used are purchase history, behavior data, channel engagement and demographic attributes.
  • According to Unbounce’s latest Conversion Benchmark Report, the median landing page conversion rate across industries stands at 6.6%, though this figure varies substantially depending on the sector and traffic channel. In analyzing more than 57 million conversions across more than 41,000 landing pages and upwards of 464 million unique visitors, Unbounce found that the median conversion rate ranges from a low of 3.8% for the SaaS industry to a high of 12.3% for the Events and Entertainment sector. This wide range across industries can be a reflection of differing expectations, buyer journeys, and types of offers associated with each industry. For instance, while E-Commerce pages (4.2% median conversion rate) typically aim for direct sales, Education-focused pages (8.4% median conversion rate) may prioritize lead generation, such as capturing email addresses, which tend to convert at higher rates. The analysts indeed caution that the data only examines conversion events, and not the value per conversion event.Traffic source also plays a role in landing page performance. The report highlights that email campaigns generate the highest median conversion rates, averaging an impressive 19.3%. Paid social (12%) traffic converts at a higher rate than paid search (10.9%) traffic, with display (4.1%) trailing distantly. Email is generally a middle and bottom of the funnel tactic, while display ads are often used for top-of-the-funnel brand awareness.
  • After several quarters of growth that brought the sector to an almost complete recovery from the pandemic, the US B2B exhibition industry hit a bump in the road during the second quarter, according to the latest report from the Center for Exhibition Industry Research (CEIR). The CEIR Total Index, a quarterly measure of exhibition industry performance, sat 12.3% below comparable 2019 levels in Q2 2024, down from a 7.7% deficit a quarter earlier and a 10% gap during the year-earlier period. The CEIR Total Index takes into account the net square feet of exhibit space sold, professional attendance, number of exhibiting companies, and total event gross revenue. Among these 4 metrics, Net Square Feet has shown the strongest recovery, though it trails the Q2 2019 baseline by 6.6%, after having exceeded its comparable 2019 figure during Q1. The rest of the metrics have double-digit percentage deficits compared to Q2 2019, as measured by the number of Attendees (-12.6%), the number of Exhibitors (-13.9%), and real revenues (-15.9%). Still, some 44.3% of events held during Q2 surpassed pre-pandemic levels of the CEIR Total Index, a better result than from Q1 and more than double the rate from the year-earlier period (Q2 2023), when only about one-fifth (20.5%) exceeded the Q2 2019 levels. The cancellation rate for events continues to be fractional, at just 1%, on par with the year-earlier period and down from 2.2% in Q2 2022.
  • Advertisers have said they’re spreading their retail media spending across more than lower-funnel objectives, but the predominant goal remains increasing sales, according to research from Quartile. In surveying 153 US brand owners, marketing decision-makers and agency decision-makers with at least $10K in ad spend per month, the report reveals that increased sales is by far the most critical goal for all respondents, more than twice as important as the next on the list, improved brand awareness. Overall, respondents are happy with retail media’s impact on these goals. Three-quarters report being either “very satisfied” (12%) or “satisfied” (63%) with the impact that retail media has had on their company’s goals and KPIs in the past 12 months. For the time being, the most frequently leveraged channels for retail media strategies are search (77%) and social commerce (74%), followed by marketplaces (63%) and programmatic (60%), with the latter tending to attract the largest budgets. On average, the study finds that marketers are using roughly 4 retail media channels as part of their strategies. There’s a two-horse race for effectiveness, with 38% share citing Amazon Ads as providing the best ROI and 37% pointing to Google Ads. Finally, 91% of marketers surveyed plan to leverage artificial intelligence (AI) as part of their retail media strategy, with the expected impact being greatest for improvement of ROI insights.
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