ecommert Navigator Q3 24 Has Landed. Global Digital Commerce Benchmarks, Trends, Insights, and Recommendations Report is Here

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What you'll find:

Welcome to the 2024 ecommert Navigator Report, in which we track 15 markets and 17 categories.

This report results from extensive dialogues with leaders across global CPG brands, retailers, digital media agencies, and pioneering tech firms.

By synthesizing data from multiple sources, insights from our connections, we aim to provide a strategic, data-driven outlook that reflects the pulse of our industry.

Our analysis addresses the most pressing challenges and forward-looking opportunities.

Our purpose is to equip executives and decision-makers with the insights necessary to navigate this competitive and rapidly transforming ecosystem with confidence.

I thank my teammates Debmalya Dutta and Sebastian Soran for the amazing work we've put together in a very short time. With ecommert Navigator, you can navigate trends and accelerate insights.

We can not fit all the report insights here, you can download 90+ pages report here: https://ecommert.ai/ecommert_navigator_q324/

Navigating 2024 into 2025: The Convergence of AI, Social Commerce, and Seamless Retail Experiences in Digital Commerce

This report delves into key global trends in digital commerce, including retail media, the digital shelf, and consumer insights. It highlights major disruptions and innovations that are reshaping the industry and will continue to do so. From the emergence of retail media networks to the dominance of social commerce, brands must navigate an environment that demands adaptability, strategic foresight, and unwavering customer focus.

Generative AI (GenAI) and hyper-personalization are revolutionizing customer interaction, making AI-driven recommendations and smart search capabilities essential for tailored shopping experiences. Social media, now a robust sales channel, empowers brands to meet consumers where they engage, with AI-enhanced, real-time personalization power and the surge of social commerce.

With increased competition from low-cost players, building emotional connections with customers is critical to fostering loyalty. Rapid advancements in AI and automation provide brands new tools to optimize operations, enhance customer service, and boost efficiency, keeping them competitive in an evolving market.

Today’s consumers expect seamless shopping across all channels—online, in-store, or social—highlighting the need for a unified “retail everywhere” approach that integrates digital and physical experiences.

This report brings market data from multiple sources and reflects insights from leading industry experts, major CPG brands, and tech innovators. We trust it will serve as a strategic guide to help you navigate the opportunities and challenges that lie ahead in digital commerce.

Thank you for joining us on this journey into the future.

Q3 2024 Highlights & Measurement

Global Market Overview

Digital commerce is propelling retail growth, while brick-and-mortar continues to decline (value & volume).

Global View: eCommerce Growth

Although the growth of eCommerce is healthy, its pace is slowing. Nonetheless, we anticipate that successful organizations will prioritize marketplace strategies, retail media execution, and growth in eCommerce segments such as grocery in mature markets like China, the US, and the UK. In contrast, they will need to be selective about their strategies and competitive approaches in high-growth markets such as Eastern Europe, India, Brazil, Indonesia, and Thailand, where the potential for eCommerce is vast but requires a different playbook to succeed.

Global View: Category eCommerce Growth

All categories are forecasted to broadly retain their 2024YoTY growth rates for the next 3 years. The two largest eCommerce segments, Fashion and Electronics also have the highest eCommerce penetration. The next growth and battle frontier in eCommerce will be Grocery which has and is projected to grown much faster than all other categories. Foods (at 14.1% CAGR) are expected to grow faster than Beverages (at 13.2% CAGR). In 2024, Amazon has made several announcements and taken actions that clearly indicate online grocery is a major growth priority for the company.

Global Market Overview

Although overall eCommerce growth is slowing to low single digits, it remains the primary driver of retail growth. In the US Grocery segment, in-store revenue has decreased by 0.2% in value and 1.6% in volume year-to-date, while eCommerce has grown by 9.7% in value. Globally, the gap between in-store and eCommerce growth is widening due to market maturity and eCommerce penetration. Therefore, eCommerce must remain a top priority for brands

Consumer Vitals

Global consumer consumers remain highly cautious amid ongoing inflation concerns, with sustained wariness around essential costs like groceries and fuel impacting spending behaviours.

Although some financial metrics show slight year-over-year improvement, economic uncertainty continues to drive conservative spending, as fewer consumers feel confident enough to indulge in non-essential purchases.

Retail Media

Paid Media plays a key role in ensuring the visibility of a brand’s product – Availability without Visibility does not do any good.

As Retail Media spend grows at 28% and is projected to increase by over 20% in the coming years, brands must determine how to fund this to maintain product visibility. If they cut brand-building budgets, it could create significant organizational friction. Reallocating funds may hamper brand-building objectives, while rejecting such changes will make retaining market share a daunting task.

So, brands needs to have a well executed strategy focusing on driving organic visibility, prioritizing iROI, full funnel & integrated marketing approaches and make smart financial/ data backed choices on media channel mix to deliver profitable , topline growth without impacting the shape of the P&L.

Retail Media Landscape

Retail media spending showed healthy year-over-year (YOY) growth. After experiencing four consecutive quarters of double-digit cost-per-click (CPC) inflation, it appears that price growth has reached a plateau, with an overall increase of just 2%. The growth observed in Q3 was predominantly driven by increased volume, as impressions and clicks grew at rates comparable to spending, making CPC less of a contributing factor.

While Demand-Side Platforms (DSP) played a significant role in driving growth, they were not the sole contributors. Notably, Walmart’s spending outpaced that of Amazon overall. Additionally, other retailers experienced a substantial increase in clicks, coupled with a year-over-year decline in CPCs. This trend has enabled brands to maintain overall price stability by diversifying their strategies.

Amazon USA Faces Rising eCPM, Suggesting Increased Competition and Cost Pressure

In Amazon USA, both Sponsored Products and Sponsored Brands show an increase in eCPM YoY (+5.1% for SP and +2.9% for SB), indicating intensified competition. This upward trend in costs implies that brands need to be more strategic in managing budgets to maintain ROAS. This increase highlights the importance of optimizing ad placement, targeting, and images to achieve efficient returns amidst high costs.

Walmart USA's eCPM for Sponsored Brands Reflects High-Cost Pressures

The data for Walmart USA reveals a YoY increase in eCPM for Sponsored Products (+11.3%) but a substantial decrease for Sponsored Brands (-21.4%). Brands focusing on visibility at a broader brand level may find Walmart’s Sponsored Brand ads an attractive option due to the lower eCPM.

Amazon Europe Shows Favorable eCPM, Indicating a Cost-Effective Environment

Although there is a percentage increase in eCPM, the absolute costs remain lower compared to Amazon USA. This trend highlights a relatively cost-effective environment in Europe, providing a strategic opportunity for CPG brands to maximize reach and engagement.

Insights & Tactical Recommendations

“Adopting a diversified, full-funnel retail media strategy enables CPG brands to capitalize on both immediate conversion opportunities and long-term brand-building.

By leveraging stabilized CPC rates to scale ad volume and strategically aligning campaigns with peak shopping events, brands can drive impactful engagement and optimize ROI.”

Digital Shelf

Across geographies and categories, brands have a golden opportunity to prioritize Digital Shelf Excellence.

This isn’t just a nice-to-have; it’s essential for driving increased sales and slashing media spend, leading to greater efficiency.

Before aiming for the stars, brands must first establish this foundational excellence—anything less is simply unacceptable.

Broadly, the Alcoholic beverage segment operates at very high levels of Online Stock Availability. A 1% OLA improvement for Skincare segments in the US roughly unlocks $90m of sales just on Amazon. Learning from their offline businesses, business should target OLA > 95%

The United States and United Kingdom show modest eCommerce growth at 1% and 2%, respectively, but benefit from high Average Order Values (AOV).

Germany leads with the highest conversion rate at 2.1% and a strong AOV of $144.59, indicating a mature, profitable market ideal for retention-focused strategies.

Latin America faces growth challenges with a deceleration and moderate AOV of $68.59, requiring strategies to boost traffic and conversion.

APAC - EANZJ shows a decline, with -9% growth and a low conversion rate of 0.6%, suggesting the need for a strategic reassessment to better align with regional consumer behaviors.

Eastern Europe has strong recovery signs with 22% eCommerce and traffic growth, though a 1.1% conversion rate points to opportunities in improving user experience.

Middle East Asia shows a high AOV of $129.31 but a low 0.7% conversion rate, highlighting potential gains through conversion optimization to leverage high-value transactions.

United States and United Kingdom both display modest eCommerce growth at 1% and 2% respectively, but both benefit from higher average order value, particularly the U.S. at $124.89.

Germany exhibits a strong conversion rate of 2.1%, the highest among the regions observed, supported by a high average order value of $144.59. This performance highlights that Germany is a mature eCommerce market where brands can use targeted retention strategies to further leverage existing customer value.

Shoppable Media

Looking Ahead

These 6 broad trends below have been gathered through our multiple discussions with CPG leaders in various geographies, our company’s research of various categories & ecommerce channels and that of our agency partners

We also see that in the last 8 quarters, brands have taken price increases and starting 2024 and going forward, brands will feel the pressure of delivering against

We think that these underlying trends are important for brands for consider because they will need to deliver:

• Top-line growth relying on volume growth
• Cost efficiencies as eCommerce profitability at large & incremental Retail media spending continue to be questioned.

Expert Recommendations for CPG Companies

Looking Ahead & Expert Recommendation #2

Capitalize on Social Commerce Growth by Focusing on Platform Specific Strategies

Build a robust social commerce strategy targeting high-engagement platforms. Develop a platform-specific social commerce strategy targeting high-engagement platforms to drive sales through tailored, interactive content, leveraging each platform's strengths and demographics to maximize brand exposure and conversion.

Data Sources & Methodology

To achieve our goal of aggregating a wide range of market snapshots, we implemented a comprehensive methodology that synthesizes data from diverse marketplaces and reputable industry sources. The methodology behind Navigator report is designed to offer a trusted and nuanced view of the global digital commerce landscape. Our analysis spans over 1.8 billion unique global shoppers across 72 countries, monitoring online shopping activities, consumer spending behaviors, and digital price movements over the past five quarters.

Leveraging data from industry-leading platforms such as Adobe, Salesforce, Deloitte, Google, Microsoft Advertising, Amazon, Walmart, and social channels, we examine a data set from over $10.3 billion in ad spending.

By synthesizing these extensive datasets—alongside marketplace seller metrics—we deliver a comprehensive and credible view of shifting consumer behaviors and evolving market dynamics.

Time Period: July 1st, 2023, to Sep 30, 2024

We can not fit all the report insights here, you can download 90+ pages report here: https://ecommert.ai/ecommert_navigator_q324/

Stay ahead of the curve.

Mert Damlapinar

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About ecommert

ecommert partners with CPG businesses and leading technology companies of all sizes to accelerate growth through AI-driven digital commerce solutions. Our expertise spans cross-channel strategy, retail media optimization, and digital shelf analytics, ensuring smarter and more efficient operations across B2C, eB2B, and DTC channels.

From revenue growth management to data and technology enablement, we empower leaders to drive results and future-proof their digital commerce strategies.

About Mert Damlapinar

Mert Damlapinar is a Top Voice on LinkedIn and a multi-award-winning global digital commerce leader. He has worked in digital commerce, retail media, digital shelf, and artificial intelligence for over 16 years. He has held executive positions in global companies such as L'Oréal, Mondelēz, and Sabra/PepsiCo. He is also the author of the bestselling books "Analytics of Life" and "Agile Analytics for Start-Ups". As founder and the CEO of the ecommert platform, he applies global solutions, artificial intelligence tools, and frameworks for retail media optimization, digital shelf excellence, and actionable insights for CPG brands and advises Fortune 500 companies and digital commerce executives.

He holds a master’s degree in Applied Business Analytics from Boston University, a marketing degree from Cornell University, and two executive graduate degrees in Artificial Intelligence and Digital Transformation from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

DISCLAIMER: The information, opinions, and examples provided in our reports, online posts, newsletters, videos, and podcasts are for general information only. Any reliance on the information provided in our content is done at your own risk.

No ecommert employees own any stocks or financial instruments of any CPG companies or companies mentioned in the above document. All the above information is public information.

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