A monthly update on overall marketing trends, PPC search and social, SEO, and development trends.

With Black Friday and Cyber Monday being fresh on the mind, these marketing insights will primarily focus on performance and takeaways from the biggest e-commerce days of the year.

Happy Holidays!

Overall Marketing Trends

• Black Friday Hits Record $74.4bn in Sales, Up 5% YoY
  • Global Black Friday online spending rose to $74.4 billion, with US consumers contributing $10.8 billion, marking a 10.2% annual increase. Mobile devices drove 55% of sales, translating to $5.9 billion in revenue. High discounts on toys, electronics, and TVs increased consumer activity, indicating an early holiday shopping peak.
• Cyber Monday Spent $49.7bn Globally
  • Global Cyber Monday spending increased to $49.7 billion, with US consumers spending $13.3 billion, leading to a 7.3% YoY increase. Mobile devices drove 57% of sales, making that $7.6 billion in revenue; similar to Black Friday, there were high discounts on electronics, toys, and apparel.
• Adobe’s Holiday Shopping Report
  • This helps visualize the holiday spending data showing the YoY comparisons of revenue by day, discounts, mobile spending, and growth of Buy Now, Pay Later models.

What We Saw

Trends (across all channels)

• CPCs increased across the board from increased competition
  • In our portfolio, November CPCs were +17% YoY vs +35% YoY on BFCM
• CVR improved throughout November but dipped during BFCM
  • Retailers that used GenAI tools saw a 15% bump in CVR
• Cyber Monday was the biggest sales day, specifically in the evening hours

Takeaways

• Run sales 1-2 weeks before Black Friday
• Close deals with warm audiences and existing customers on BFCM
• Those that shifted more budget into Paid Social channels saw the most success
• Push budget hard towards evening hours on Cyber Monday

• Google Ads Introduces Audience Curation Tools
  • Google Ads now offers audience curation tools exclusively for agencies, enhancing targeting and campaign control.
• What is MER? Why It’s a Metric Every Business Should Be Using

• Amazon Faces Increased Competition & CPC Surges During The Holiday Season
  • Preliminary data from the 2024 Black Friday shopping event indicates intensified competition among brands advertising on Amazon, with ad spending increasing by nearly 30% compared to 2023. E-commerce platform Pacvue reports a 9.9% rise in the cost-per-click (CPC) for Amazon ads, reaching $1.89. This surge in costs highlights the increasing pressure on brands to stay visible during the crucial holiday shopping season.
• Amazon’s Prices Averaged 14% Lower Than Other Leading U.S. Retailers On BF/CM
  • An independent study by ecommerce analytics firm Profitero revealed that Amazon had the lowest online prices entering the holiday season, averaging 14% lower than other leading U.S. retailers. This marks the eighth consecutive year Amazon has held this price advantage.
• Amazons T-12 Event Breaks Record Numbers
  • Amazon announced that its Black Friday Week and Cyber Monday event, held from November 21 to December 2, was the company’s biggest ever. It set records for both sales and the number of items sold, surpassing previous years’ performance for the same 12-day period ending on Cyber Monday.

• Meta Ads Adds Frequency Controls to Auction Based Campaigns
  • Meta has introduced a ‘Target Frequency’ feature for auction-based awareness and engagement campaigns, allowing advertisers to control the average number of weekly ad impressions per user to enhance brand recall and engagement. 

• Google’s Site Reputation Abuse Policy: What You Need to Know
  • Google has expanded its Site Reputation Abuse Policy to penalize websites that host low-quality, third-party content (such as “parasite SEO”) regardless of the site’s level of involvement, including cases of first-party oversight or partial ownership.
• 8 Local SEO Tips to Bring Customers to Your Door
• SearchGPT: Bringing Real-Time Search to Your Conversations
  • OpenAI’s SearchGPT integrates live web search into ChatGPT, providing users with up-to-date information during conversations, thereby enhancing the relevance and accuracy of responses.
• Google Search Console Recommendations Are Now Live
  • Google has fully rolled out the Recommendations feature in Search Console, offering site-specific optimization suggestions to improve indexing, crawling, and search presence, though availability depends on Google’s assessment of each site.

• Shopify Auto-Upgrades Stores to New Checkout Starting Jan 6
• GA4 Adds Industry Benchmarking for Metrics
• GA4 Lets Businesses Merge External Data for Reports
• GA4 Adds Row Plotting to Charts
• Applovin Grows With AI-Powered Mobile Ads
• Meta Builds Search Engine for AI Chatbot
• Bluesky Drives 3x Higher Engagement Rates

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That wraps up our Digital Marketing Industry Insights for this month! Keep an eye out for these updates every month, and if you have any questions, email us at info@digitalposition.com.