Despite a continued downward trend in revenue for ecommerce brands, there’s a silver lining as we gear up for the holiday season. Media spend has stayed consistent, and CPA is down, showing a path forward to reach new customers. For lead generation brands, media spend remains stable, with Google Ads’ CPA experiencing a drop and Meta’s CPA holding steady. These dynamics, discovered by Hawke AI’s proprietary data based on thousands of online businesses, present a promising landscape for marketers to maximize their campaigns’ effectiveness. 

 

Takeaways for Ecommerce Brands

 

• For July, revenue was down 3% in July 2023 compared to 2022. For both years, revenue in January-June had dropped 4%. The culprit continues to be the total number of sessions being down. 
• Media spend in July was consistent with June, with a less than 1% variance. The allocation was a bit different, with paid social platforms taking a small percentage of the mix away from paid search. It’s too early to tell if this is a strategic shift to start preparing for end-of-year sales events, or if it’s just a blip. 
• CPAs on Meta and Google declined by 22% and 20%, respectively. Reported conversions were up on both of these platforms, which is certainly good news, but has to be taken with a grain of salt given overall revenue trends. 

 

Takeaways for Lead-Generation Brands 

 

• There are no increases in media spend yet as brands continue to be frugal with their budgets. Overall spending is down 10% compared to June and is flat compared to July 2022. 
• Last month, CPAs on Meta and Google Ads were within $1 of each other, which was rare, as Google Ads typically have higher-intent audiences and, in turn, a lower CPA. This trend has leveled back out as Google’s CPA went down 20% while Meta’s held flat. 
• A decrease in Google’s CPA followed a 23% drop in its CPM. This CPA drop was almost just as high. 
• Meta on the other hand, had a decrease in conversion rate but also a decrease in CPM and CPC, which netted out against each other to produce a consistent CPA.

 

This proprietary data comes from HawkeAI, a revolutionary data benchmarking tool that tracks your paid and organic marketing performance against competitors in your industry, provides real-time insights and suggestions to optimize ads, and presents data in an easy-to-read and even easier-to-report dashboard.