During This Holiday Season, Brands Waste Hundreds of Millions on Digital Ads, Globally $600M is Misspent

2.3 M 

Over the Thanksgiving weekend, social media was flooded with 2.3 million posts discussing holiday shopping, Black Friday. A Sprout Social analysis revealed that 50% of these posts were positive, 18% were negative, and 32% were neutral. Popular Black Friday items discussed on social media included televisions, PS5s, Airpods, iPhones, and Xbox. 48% of Gen Z planning to buy gifts through social platforms, according to a Shopify and Gallup survey.

7.5%  

As per Adobe Analytics, there is a shift towards mobile shopping among consumers.  
This holiday season marks the first time that mobile shopping is projected to surpass desktop purchases, with over 51.2% of online spending expected to occur on mobile devices. Despite consumer hesitancy, online spending on Black Friday set a new record at $9.8 billion, marking a 7.5% increase from the previous year.

$600M  

During the holiday season, brands are misspending hundreds of millions in digital ad spend, with over $600 million spent globally on ads deemed unsuitable digitally, as per CreativeX's analysis. Extrapolating to 2023, an estimated $73 billion is predicted to be wasted on suboptimal digital ads in Q4. In 2020 and 2021, over 50% of digital ad expenditure was allocated to image and video ads that were not appropriately optimized for their digital context. 

95%   

As of October 2023, nearly 95% of Internet users worldwide are active on social media, a 4% increase from the previous year, according to OnlyAccounts.io. Despite a slowdown in growth compared to 2020 and 2021, social media platforms have witnessed a decade of continuous user expansion, with an average of 350 million new users annually since 2019. Although internet users globally reached 5.3 billion, growing by 3.7% YOY, social media users, totaling 4.95 billion, have outpaced this growth, increasing by 4.5%. 

$12.4 B  

Amazon announced that the period from Nov. 17 to Cyber Monday marked Amazon's "biggest ever" holiday shopping event, with over one billion items purchased globally, although specific sales figures were not disclosed. Meanwhile, U.S. shoppers set a record on Cyber Monday, spending $12.4 billion, exceeding initial expectations and contributing to online sales during Cyber Week reaching $38 billion, surpassing Adobe's projected $37.2 billion.  

26.9%  

Walmart is set to strengthen its dominant position in grocery e-commerce, projected to control 26.9% of the market by the end of 2024, surpassing Amazon's expected 18.5%, according to Insider Intelligence. Walmart's rapid growth in online grocery sales, anticipated to reach $58.92 billion in 2024.  

30%

With the surge in buy now, pay later transactions, Klarna reported a 30% increase in Black Friday orders from U.S. shoppers compared to the previous year. Among the top items clicked on were food mixers, processors, TVs, soundbars, coffee makers, eReaders, and hard drives, with notable percentage increases. According to a Klarna holiday shopping survey, 81% of 15,000 U.S. and international respondents find the option to pay in interest-free installments useful during the holidays, with Gen Z shoppers expressing this sentiment at 89%.