Cyber Five is Still Alive

Cyber Five is still a thing. Cyber Monday retained its spot as the top online spending day, driving over $11B in eComm sales, a 5.8% increase compared to last year. The past 5 days are projected to contribute to 15.6% of this year’s total retail spending . Down slightly from what we observed last season (16.9%), as the buying season continues to spread throughout the full holiday season, starting earlier thanks to Amazon/Walmart/Target and going deeper into December with return to stores and improved supply chains.?Cyber

Demand was driven by deals from retailers looking to clear excess inventory built up from supply-chain challenges and waning consumer demand. According to Salesforce, the average discount rate was 30%; highlighting a balance every brand needs to make between profit margins and volume.?

Searches on Google for “deals” increased 25% this C5, compared to a -10% decrease for “gifts” which provides a view into the shifting priorities of shoppers as we head into December. Coupled with a 78% increase of Buy-Now-Pay-Later usage this week, we’re starting to more clearly see consumer’s willingness to stretch their spending to take advantage of value.?

Shoppers found those deals on Paid Search, which was Black Friday’s biggest driver, representing 30% of all online sales (Adobe ). Direct (18%), email (17%) and organic search (15%) were also major contributors, while revenue attributed to social media amounted to less than 5%.?

What worked:?

• Advertisers who embraced automation through value-based bidding (ROAS) and self-driving campaigns like Performance Max were able to drive efficient growth with less dependency on manual intervention than ever before.?
• Those who started early by building awareness and traffic before Cyber Five were able to tap into remarketing lists and leverage their brand and first-party data to acquire new customers easier and more efficiently than those who tried to just win in the auction during the peak shopping hours.?
• Marketers who planned around and rode the intra-day and volatile consumer shopping windows (read: had patience) found success by being present where and when shoppers were looking for their products.?

?Moving forward:

There’s still plenty more shopping action to come, with some of the biggest retail days still on the horizon. Mastercard is projecting December to make up 35% of retail sales this quarter, in a return to its pre-pandemic glory of holiday champ.

Throughout all retail categories, inventory levels are likely still elevated, which should be a top priority to resolve heading into a year of uncertain consumer financial standing and access to capital funding.??

According to a recent survey from Deloitte , 37% of consumers say their financial situation is worse than it was a year ago while debt levels have recently increased by the largest jump since 2007.?

So as you look to close out this year, here are a few tactics to consider:

• Remarket to all of the traffic you just drove to your site. This is a goldmine of new potential customers who considered your product but didn’t purchase. Get back in front of them and seal-the-deal with an “exclusive” last-chance offer.?
• Ramp up your communications through your low-cost channels like email and SMS while reaching this audience pool outside of the Search auction on platforms like YouTube and Discovery.??
• If you have excess inventory, clear it. Consider increasing your competitiveness in the auction by lowering your ROAS targets . Use this calculator to identify your breakeven ROAS to ensure you’re moving through products at a level you can afford (video walkthrough ).
• For those managing a variety of SKUs, consider segmenting your merchandise by margin to help you bid based on the profitability of your products. Rather than setting one ROAS target for your entire catalog, bid higher on your high-margin products and lower on your low-margin SKUs.??
• If you also sell your products offline, increase efforts to drive traffic to your stores or partners to capture last-minute shoppers. Leverage affiliate retail or owned-location extensions & omni-bidding to include store visits value in your bidding while ensuring your ad copy reflects your in-store availability.
• Depending on your product offering, pivot from promotions to gifts as shoppers seek gifts for their families (and themselves!). Around this time last year, searches for “gifts” began to rise and swapped with deal-seeking related queries. Gift cards could work too where it makes sense from a cash flow and inventory perspective, add these to your Merchant Center feed so they can serve via shopping ads.?