AdRoll, the leading marketing and advertising platform that helps direct-to-consumer brands grow their businesses, today released the Q4 2023 edition of its State of Digital Marketing Report, a comprehensive summary providing invaluable insights into the changing digital marketing landscape in the third quarter of 2023. The report enables a deeper understanding of overall marketing trends and offers strategic ideas to improve marketing return on ad spend (ROAS) and return on investment (ROI) during the holiday season.

“Despite the economic headwinds in the first half of 2023, the economy mostly stabilized in Q3, yet consumers are still hesitant to spend,” said Vibhor Kapoor, president of AdRoll. “Marketers need to leverage data to segment their target audiences strategically, take advantage of low CPMs, and personalize messaging and offers to win the battle of this challenging holiday season.”

AdRoll analyzed data from 2,000 online businesses in North America across finance, beauty and fashion, fitness, technology, travel and other industries, resulting in these key findings:

• CPM in Q3 was 33% lower than a year ago, but it started to increase as the holiday season approached in September. However, the magnitude of this increase was relatively mild, especially factoring in the CPM drop earlier in the year. It signals that advertisers are still quite conservative and slower to ramp up their holiday campaigns this year.
• While the U.S. inflation rate stabilizes, consumers are still hesitant to spend. Marketers will likely face a more challenging holiday shopping season this year, with holiday sales growth projections ranging from 3% to 4.6%, lower than those of previous years.
• Website visitor traffic has been stable, with a moderate gain of 2% in Q3 of 2023 compared to the last year. To succeed this holiday season, marketers need to take advantage of the lower CPM this year to get in front of high-intent shoppers and increase website conversions.