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Marketers use just 42% of their ‘martech stack’ capabilities
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Marketers report utilising just 42% of the breadth of capabilities available in their martech stack overall, down from 58% in 2020.

Gartner surveyed 324 marketers in May and June 2022 to determine the state of marketing technology acquisition, adoption and use.

“CMOs reported allocating a quarter of their entire marketing expense budgets to marketing technologies in 2022,” said Benjamin Bloom, VP Analyst in the Gartner Marketing practice.

“Despite turbulent budgets in previous years and current economic headwinds, tech investments are a priority for CMOs and proving their ROI is more crucial than ever,” Bloom said. “Yet the challenges associated with martech underutilization, such as new business models and disrupted customer journeys, are making it difficult for marketers to demonstrate technology’s value.”

The 16 percentage point drop in overall martech utilization in the past two years can be attributed to a significant amount of overlap among marketing technology solutions (30% of respondents), difficulty identifying and recruiting talent to drive adoption/utilization (28%), and complexity/sprawl of the marketing technology ecosystem (27%).

Martech Stacks Prepare for a Cookieless Future With New Adtech and Commerce Capabilities

One of the tools identified by survey respondents that support innovative marketing channels was social commerce, with 62% of respondents saying they have deployed, or plan to deploy, such technology (see Figure 1). Technology to support advertising execution and measurement in audio and streaming/connected TV (CTV) environments has also found a base of support, with 65% of respondents exploring or piloting associated technologies.

Figure 1. How Marketing Leaders Are Leveraging Technology to Support Emerging Activities (% of Respondents)

Source: Gartner (September 2022)

Marketers also indicated interest in commercial activity within more emerging technologies. This includes the metaverse and non-fungible tokens (NFTs), with 62% exploring or piloting technology to support metaverse advertising and 59% exploring or piloting technology to enable creation of NFTs.

“The fact that marketers are already leveraging technology to support emerging activities underscores their desire to outfox the competition and get a head start on controlling their own destinies in a world of more fallible identifiers,” said Bloom.

To maximize the value of martech investments, Gartner recommends marketing leaders:

  • Infuse marketing technology adoption and utilization goals into team performance objectives to minimize wasted investments.
  • Manage the risk of expensive integrated suite investments. Establish alternatives to preserve negotiation leverage and persistently validate the vendor’s ability to support desired martech capabilities.
  • Review the approach to supporting customer journey orchestration with technology to ensure that martech and IT collaborate through capability-focused delivery teams using an iterative approach.
  • Avoid leaving investments in tools and technologies for social commerce, podcast advertising and CTV/over-the-top (OTT) streaming advertising to agencies or service providers by default. Pursue long-term in-house capability development around these tools and include them in their martech roadmap.

68% of UK marketers are embracing hybrid working
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More than two thirds (68%) of UK marketers are embracing a hybrid approach to work to support their teams in the creation of new ideas having overcome the challenges of the past two years.

That’s according to research from digital experience platform (DXP) provider Optimizely, which concluded that creativity is critical in driving strong customer experiences.

The Marketer Experience study, based on a global survey of in-house marketing professionals, including 200 in the UK, explores attitudes and approaches to creativity. It reveals that 85% of UK marketers say as long as communication is effective, creative ideation will happen no matter where teams are.

The report also shows that physical presence is not the only factor impacting creative behaviours, with UK marketers citing the following as the top five barriers to driving creativity over the past two years:

  1. A lack of urgency (32%)
  2. Limited or lack of access to good collaboration tools (31%)
  3. Engaging remote employees during virtual meetings (31%)
  4. Leadership team putting pressure on outcomes and results (29%)
  5. Motivating employees to develop creative ideas (28%)

A hybrid working environment also supports the ways in which UK workers find their creative inspiration, with 43% drawing on interpersonal communications with peers and/or colleagues, 41% from social media such as TikTok, Instagram and Twitter, and 40% through internet research. More than one third (37%) also find inspiration from attending events, either in-person or virtual.

Download the Optimizely report; “The 2022 Marketer’s Experience: Hybrid Work Impacts Delivery of Exceptional Customer Experiences.”

Marketing analytics are only influencing 53% of decisions
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Marketing analytics are responsible for influencing just over half (53%) of marketing decisions, according to a survey by Gartner.

In May and June 2022, Gartner surveyed 377 users of marketing analytics to explore the role of marketing analytics in decision making.

“CMOs often believe that achieving marketing data integration goals will lead to greater influence and increased value of marketing analytics,” said Joseph Enever, Sr. Director Analyst in the Gartner Marketing practice. “The reality is that better data won’t increase marketing analytics’ decision influence alone. CMOs must address the real challenges — cognitive biases and the need for a data-informed culture.”

The survey found that the quantity of marketing decisions that analytics influences does matter: Organizations that report marketing analytics influence fewer than 50% of decisions are more likely to agree that they are unable to prove the value of marketing. Once marketing analytics teams cross that 50% threshold, there are likely diminishing returns to striving to increase the quantity of decisions influenced.

“By 2023, Gartner expects 60% of CMOs will slash the size of their marketing analytics department in half because of failed promised improvements,” said Enever.

Top Barriers to Marketing Analytics’ Influence: Data Quality Challenges and Cognitive Biases

Consumers of marketing analytics continue to cite evergreen data management challenges as the top reason analytics are not used when making decisions. The challenges of “data are inconsistent across sources” and “data are difficult to access” rose to the top in this year’s survey.

Marketing organizations regularly respond to these challenges by integrating more data or acquiring different technology seen as a fix-all approach to marketing data management — yet they fail to realize tangible impacts on key outcomes. For example, marketers experience diminishing marginal returns on data integration when pursuing a 360-degree view of the customer.

Barriers to the use of marketing analytics in decision making are not always caused by data integration challenges unique to marketing — rather, much of this boils down to people and/or process problems.

For instance, key cognitive biases are at the root of marketing analytics’ influence plateau. One-third of respondents reported that decision makers cherry-pick data to try to tell a story that aligns with their preconceived decision or opinion.

In addition, roughly a quarter of respondents said that decision makers do not review the information provided by the marketing analytics team (26%), reject their recommendations (24%), or rely on gut instincts to ultimately make their choice (24%).

CMOs must address these challenges by:

  • Tracking the decisions that are made based on analytics to provide a current state of view and areas to improve. Identify examples of marketing analytics work that provided actionable recommendations to a marketing campaign or program. Marketing leaders should encourage their team to look for patterns in decision-making habits and to document the types of decisions they influence.
  • Combatting cherry-picking. Set KPIs and metrics before launching a new campaign or marketing strategy, not after the data has already started to come in.
  • Encouraging senior leaders to set an example. Avoid being a HiPPO (Highest Paid Person’s Opinion) and actually allow data to inform, or change, decisions.
  • Establish analytics upskilling programs that account for differing workflows and resource constraints across the marketing organization. Build personas that detail how different employees need to use data in their roles and prioritize training sessions that best enable participants to learn the skills they need to perform their job.

Economy will make digital planning difficult to navigate in 2023
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Business leaders who plan for “business as usual” modest spending increases in the year ahead will fall short, due to an unpredictable and turbulent economy, so will need to tackle planning with discipline and precision in order to trim waste, experiment, and make bold, smart investments.

That’s the conclusion of Forrester’s latest Planning Guides, which provide benchmark data and insights to help technology, marketing, digital, CX, product and sales leaders prioritise 2023 budget investments.

The reports highlight where to increase investment and cut spending, as well as which emerging technologies to experiment with in 2023. Key insights from Forrester’s 2023 Planning Guides include:

Areas to increase investment in 2023:

  • Customer insights and engagement. With 2023 unlikely to look like any past recession, many assumptions about customers and their behavior will be rendered useless. Leaders should invest in new customer data and analytics tools, such as experience research platforms (XPRs), to sharpen audience targeting strategies.
  • Technologies that improve CX and reduce costs. Current economic headwinds will require focusing on technology tuned for optimization and resilience. Leaders should invest in tools that drive loyalty and reduce operational costs, such as robotic process automation (RPA) and agent-assist apps.

Areas to decrease investment in 2023:

  • Technical debt — including cloud. Many thought the cloud would be the antidote to technical debt, but yesterday’s lifted-and-shifted workloads are now debt themselves given how inefficient to operate and difficult to upgrade they are. In 2023, leaders should consider early cloud deployments as candidates for technical debt reductions.
  • Low-quality data partners and innovation outsourcing. Partners will continue to play an important role in growth, but two key areas are ripe for cuts. As the quality of third-party data continues to drop, leaders should streamline these partnerships to only those that add value to customer relationships. Second, firms that relied too heavily on partners for digital innovation during the pandemic-induced digital sprint should bring more innovation in house.

Areas for experimentation in 2023:

  • Extended reality, the metaverse, and Web3 that offer immersive experiences. These interlinked — and arguably overhyped — technologies hold the promise of immersive experiences linked to token-based ecosystems that use cryptocurrencies and public blockchains. Leaders in consumer industries should experiment with metaverse precursor platforms such as Roblox and Decentral to open doors to new audiences.
  • Intelligent agents that make experiences more human. An intelligent agent (IA) can make decisions or perform a service based on its environment, user input, and experiences. Leaders should plan to experiment with IAs on an ongoing basis to utilize their full potential.

“Leaders are faced with navigating a tumultuous business landscape defined by global unrest, supply chain instability and soaring inflation, as well as the ongoing aftermath of the pandemic,” said Sharyn Leaver, chief research officer at Forrester. “Tackling 2023 budget planning is a daunting task, but Forrester’s Planning Guides will help leaders make more strategic and disciplined decisions to drive business growth at a time of such uncertainty.”

Conversational AI will reduce contact centre agent staff costs by $80bn in 2026
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Conversational artificial intelligence (AI) deployments within contact centres will reduce agent staff costs by $80 billion by 2026, according to Gartner.

Furthermore, worldwide end-user spending on conversational AI solutions within contact centres is forecast to reach $1.99 billion in 2022.

“Gartner estimates that there are approximately 17 million contact center agents worldwide today,” said Daniel O’Connell, VP analyst at Gartner. “Many organizations are challenged by agent staff shortages and the need to curtail labor expenses, which can represent up to 95% of contact center costs. Conversational AI makes agents more efficient and effective, while also improving the customer experience.”

Gartner projects that one in 10 agent interactions will be automated by 2026, an increase from an estimated 1.6% of interactions today that are automated using AI. Conversational AI can automate all or part of a contact center customer interaction through both voice and digital channels, through voicebots or chatbots, and it is expected to have transformational benefits to customer service and support organizations within two years.

“While automating a full interaction – also known as call containment or deflection – corresponds to significant cost savings, there is also value in partial containment, such as automating the identification of a customer’s name, policy number and reason for calling. Capturing this information using AI could reduce up to a third of the interaction time that would typically be supported by a human agent,” said O’Connell.

While the benefits of conversational AI are compelling, the technology is still maturing. A fragmented vendor landscape and complexity of deployments will result in measured adoption through the next two years.

“Implementing conversational AI requires expensive professional resources in areas such as data analytics, knowledge graphs and natural language understanding,” said O’Connell. “Once built, the conversational AI capabilities must be continuously supported, updated and maintained, resulting in additional costs.”

Complex, large-scale conversational AI deployments can take multiple years as more call flows are built out and existing call flows are fine-tuned for improvement. Gartner estimates integration pricing at $1,000 to $1,500 per conversational AI agent, though some organizations cite costs of up to $2,000 per agent. Therefore, early adoption of conversational AI will be primarily led by organizations with 2,500 or more agents with budget for the requisite technical resources.

Worldwide social media ad spend up 19% YoY
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The new report has highlighted a rebound in median monthly global ad spend compared to the same period last year, a decrease in the median monthly click-through rate (CTR), a slight uptick in median monthly cost-per-click (CPC), and steady engagement on Facebook and Instagram.

The data, from Emplifi‘s Q2 2022 analysis of social media spend across thousands of brands worldwide, also shows a slight decrease in brands’ response rate to customers who ask questions on social media.

Brands increase investment in paid social media

After seeing a notable post-holiday drop in Q1 2022, median global monthly ad spend among brands rebounded by 18% in Q2 2022, climbing back above USD 4,200 – a figure close to the year-high level that was seen in Q4 2021. With this quarter’s rebound, median monthly ad spend has increased 19% YoY, suggesting that brands are allocating more budget to reach their target audiences via paid social.

Click-through rate (CTR) continues to decline

Emplifi data shows that median monthly CTR has been steadily decreasing over time, dipping below the 1% mark in Q1 2022. This past quarter tells a similar story, with CTR lowering to 0.93%, signaling a 11% drop YoY. Despite this decrease, businesses can continue to depend on social media advertising to return value, as engagement remains fairly stable when consumers interact with paid social posts.

Median cost-per-click (CPC) remains stable

While CTR has steadily decreased, Emplifi data shows that CPC remains relatively stable despite some fluctuations in recent quarters, hitting $0.20 in Q2 2022. With average CPC rebounding this quarter after seeing a drop at the beginning of the year, it will be interesting to see whether this is a quarterly fluctuation or the start of an upward trend.

Instagram still dominant in engagement

After seeing a steady decrease since Q2 2021, median Facebook post interactions saw a slight bump quarter-over-quarter, reaching their highest level since Q3 2021. However, Q2 2022 levels remain notably lower than Q2 2021, with brands generating approximately 5.2 interactions per 1K impressions on Facebook, a 15% decrease year-over-year. When it comes to industries, the strongest performers for engagement on Facebook were brands in the Industrial (9.79) and Accommodation (9.04) sectors, while the lowest performers were Ecommerce (2.80), Retail (3.64), and Fashion (3.90).

Instagram continues to show much stronger engagement than Facebook, with about 32 interactions per 1K impressions in Q2 2022, which is on par with what has been seen across the past year. Brands in the Beverages (47.37), Alcohol (46.83), and Software (45.11) sectors saw the highest levels of engagement, with Retail (17.71), Telecom (21.58), and Ecommerce (22.81) brands lagging.

TikTok versus Instagram

In an analysis of sister TikTok and Instagram accounts across 330 brands from January-June 2022, Emplifi data shows that brands post more often on Instagram (68%) than on TikTok (32%) in relative posting frequency. While reach and interactions were higher on Instagram, video content had greater engagement on TikTok. Either way, both platforms have shown an upward trend over six months in terms of engagement rate, peaking in June 2022, reconfirming user interest for engaging video content.

Twitter shows the fastest response times to questions

Emplifi data shows that median response rates for brands answering questions on Facebook and Instagram decreased slightly in Q2 2022. On Twitter, after some mild fluctuations, response rates have returned to a similar level from the same time last year. When looking at engagement by industry, Beauty, FMCG Food, and Home & Living brands had comparatively higher response rates to user questions on social, while Automotive brands had lower response rates across all three social media platforms.

In terms of the time it took for brands to respond to questions, Instagram and Twitter saw slight bumps quarter-over-quarter, while Facebook saw a decrease for the second straight quarter. Examining the data by industry, some brands have the slowest response times on Facebook (alcohol, beauty, FMCG food, home & living, service), while for other brands, it’s on Instagram (automotive, ecommerce, electronics, fashion, retail). However, except for one industry (FMCG food), Twitter typically sees the fastest response times among the three networks examined.

“Brands need to connect with their audiences where they are and social media is an integral part of the marketing mix,” said Emplifi CMO, Zarnaz Arlia. “It’s no secret that TikTok’s surge in popularity is continuing – we’ve found that brands post more often on Instagram than TikTok, and video content has higher engagement on TikTok. It will be interesting to see how this trends in the months ahead. What is certain though is that in today’s world, having and maintaining a solid presence on both TikTok and Instagram is essential.”

Emplifi’s analysis is based on Q2 2022 data and year-on-year comparisons downloaded at the beginning of July 2022. You can read the findings here.

Gartner identifies Four Pillars driving tech innovation in customer service
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There are four pillars driving technology innovation across customer service and support (CSS) organisations, including getting connected, process orchestration, knowledge and insight and resource management.The Gartner Hype Cycle for CSS Technologies, 2022 contains the most-important maturing technologies for supporting customers. The Gartner Hype Cycle provides a view of how a technology or application will evolve over time, providing a source of insight to manage its deployment within the context of a specific business goal.The Gartner Hype Cycle allows clients to get educated about the promise of an emerging technology within the context of their industry and individual appetite for risk.

“Efforts to increase the use of digital channels and improve automation rates using analytics are driving customer service technology spending, despite economic headwinds,” said Drew Kraus, VP Analyst at Gartner. “The technologies on this year’s Hype Cycle aim to enhance customer service, create a more seamless customer journey, and better design and direct future journeys.”

Getting connected

This category of technology focuses on delivering a channel-agnostic, architected design to create customer service journeys, including intelligent self-service.

For example, cloud contact center as a service (CCaaS) is a cloud-based application service platform that enables organizations to manage multichannel customer interactions holistically with prepackaged applications to support customers and employee engagement. Creating a seamless customer journey across assisted and self-service channels is the top priority for customer service leaders in 2022 and accelerating CCaaS adoption furthers this endeavor.

“Cloud enables organizations to focus on transforming customer experience (CX), rather than managing the day-to-day technology needs of users, which is fueling the 22% CCaaS market growth to $10.9 billion in 2023,” said Kraus.

Additional technologies on the Hype Cycle within this category include augmented reality for customer support, consumer messaging applications, proactive communications applications and services, and video contact center.

Process orchestration

The technologies within the process orchestration pillar support increasingly complex and personalized customer engagements, often via automation. For example, chatbots, a form of virtual customer assistants (VCAs), are expected to become the primary customer service channel for a quarter of organizations within five years as they evolve to handle more involved customer requests.

“Automating interactions in the enterprise has tremendous business impact that cannot be understated,” said Kraus. “The emergence of sophisticated AI voice capabilities have made large-scale call center automation viable, with huge potential for savings and positive CX.”

Additional process orchestration profiles on the Hype Cycle include customer engagement center (CEC), customer technology platforms and multiexperience.

Knowledge and insight

Innovations within this category center around the delivery of customer and operational insights, and the recommendation of next best actions across all functional groups. Key technologies on the Hype Cycle here include customer service analytics, customer journey analytics, voice-of-the-customer solutions and knowledge management for customer service.

As making better use of analytics and AI remains a top three priority for CSS leaders in 2022, many of the technologies in this category can help. One example is customer data platforms (CDPs), or software applications that support marketing and CX use cases by unifying a company’s customer data from multiple channels. CDPs optimize the timing and targeting of messages, offers and customer engagement activities, and enable the analysis of individual-level customer behavior over time.

Resource management

This category consists of technologies that engage and empower employees, resulting in a stronger CX. For example, workforce engagement management (WEM) solutions expand on the already mature workforce optimization (WFO) market by accommodating complementary technologies – interaction assistance and voice of the employee (VoE) – that help drive employee engagement. They are expected to have a high impact on service organizations within two to five years.

“WEM brings a much-needed additional dimension to the management of contact center employees,”  said Kraus. “The increase in gig and freelance workers is putting pressure on customer service departments to ensure a high perception of employee experience, without which securing their commitment will be increasingly challenging.”

Other technologies on the Hype Cycle within this pillar include mobile field service management and field service workforce optimization.

Gartner clients can read more in “Hype Cycle for Customer Service and Support Technologies, 2022.”

The most sought after freelancers in the UK? Web & graphic designers
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Twenty-two per cent of SME owners suggest that web design is the most-likely role to be outsourced, while digital roles hold top three spots for highest average hourly freelance pay.

That’s according to a recent study by small business lender iwoca, which analysed some of the UK’s most popular job sites to identify the top freelance hiring trends across the UK.

The research shows just how reliant small business owners could be on freelancers, with nearly half of respondents at 47% saying they had used a freelancer before, and 65% claiming they are likely to use one to help grow their business.

The top three roles that business owners are most likely to outsource are:

  1. Web Designer- 22%

  2. Accountant- 20%

  3. Social Media Manager- 15%

iwoca’s research on freelance site Upwork identified that the freelance skill costing the most, on an hourly basis, was Search Engine Marketing Specialist (SEM).

SEM Freelancers advertise an average hourly rate of £58.76, the most expensive skill of those studied on Upwork in the UK. If hired as a full-time employee, the hourly rate for an SEM Specialist would be just £15.17 (based on average annual salaries from Glassdoor), only around 25% of what the equivalent freelancer would make.

Rank

Freelance Skill

Average hourly rate to hire on Upwork

Annual earning potential as a freelancer

Average annual salary in full-time employment

1

SEM Specialists

£58.76

£112,826.88

£31,540

2

SEO Specialists

£57.59

£110,566.09

£35,365

3

Copywriter

£53.87

£103,424.64

£28,966

4

Developer

£51.82

£99,488.45

£41,851

5

Programming

£49.65

£95,323.84

£33,223

The three lowest paid freelance roles, all costing less than £20 per hour, were Sales Representatives, Customer Service Representative and Data Entry Execs at £17.03, £18.28 and £19.01 respectively.

Despite the high hourly rate of Search Engine Marketers, it’s not the role with the most freelance job ads. Only 13 SEM roles were advertised on the freelance site Upwork (up to 31 May) compared to the most advertised job, Developer, which had 243 openings, followed closely by Copywriter, with 234 job openings.

Rank

Job Title

Job openings for freelancers

1

Developers

243

2

Copywriter

234

3

Sales Representative

220

4

Branding

200

5

Graphic Designer

197

To view the full research please visit iwoca: here 

UK marketing budgets revised up in Q2, says IPA
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Total UK marketing budgets continued to grow at a solid pace in the second quarter of 2022, according to the latest IPA Bellwether Report. Despite this, with strengthening economic headwinds, UK companies’ financial prospects deteriorated sharply, contributing to cuts in adspend forecasts.

The IPA Bellwether Report reveals the marketing spend intentions across the UK’s top industries and in its 22 years of reporting has been one of the first indicators to show both recession and recovery.

According to the Q2 2022 Bellwether data, around a quarter (24.2%) of surveyed companies raised their total marketing expenditure during the second quarter, while 13.4% registered budget cuts. At +10.8%, the resulting net balance remained in solid positive territory, but indicated a slight slowdown in growth when compared to the opening quarter of 2022 (+14.1%).

Events was a key driver of total marketing activity growth, with the latest data signalling another record upward budget revision. At +22.2%, the respective net balance was up from +18.7% previously and the strongest-performing Bellwether category by a considerable margin. The new “living with COVID” normal has given companies the confidence to plan face-to-face events, with many firms reportedly set to use this platform to relaunch their brands. The only other Bellwether category to record growth in Q2 was public relations, which saw its expansion strengthen from the start of the year (net balance of +3.7%, from +0.6%).

Main media – which includes big-ticket advertising campaigns relating to TV – saw marketing budgets stagnate, bringing to an end a year-long sequence of growth. At 0.0%, the net balance was down sharply from +9.4%. Within main media, there were notable differences. While other online (+4.4%, from +18.6%) and video advertising (+0.8%, from +9.0%) growth continued, they both saw steep slowdowns. Audio (-16.4%, from -8.5%) and out of home (-15.9%, from -4.6%) saw downturns deepen, while published brands moved from positive to negative territory (-2.6%, from +1.3%).

Direct marketing was another Bellwether category to stagnate in Q2, also drawing to a close a four-quarter sequence of growth. The remaining monitored marketing activities saw budgets fall in the second quarter. Sales promotions (-0.7% vs. +8.0% previously), market research (-6.5% vs. -3.5% previously) and other marketing activities not already accounted for (-8.3% vs. -0.9% previously) all dragged on total expenditure.

The latest Bellwether survey signalled a broad-based deterioration in financial prospects in the second quarter.

Compared to three months ago, survey respondents became more pessimistic towards their industry-wide financial prospects, with a net balance of -26.7% of companies more downbeat overall. This was the most negative outlook since Q3 2020 and compared with a net balance of -3.6% in the first quarter of the year. While 13.6% of companies were more optimistic, 40.3% expressed gloomier sentiment.

Meanwhile, for the first time since Q3 2020, own-company financial prospects slipped into negative territory. A net balance of -9.5% of companies signalled pessimism regarding their own-company performance, the most downbeat for two years. Underlying data showed that 30.7% of survey respondents were pessimistic towards their own business prospects, compared to 21.2% that were more optimistic.

Since the last Report, the IPA Bellwether author, S&P Global Market Intelligence, has downgraded its assessment for UK economic growth prospects in 2023 through to 2025, which in turn has seen it downgrade its adspend growth forecasts over this period too. It has also cut its adspend growth forecast for 2022 to reflect the strengthening economic headwinds that have built up through the year.

Elevated inflation throughout 2022 points to a bigger hit on consumer confidence and disposable incomes. High costs for businesses will also weigh on the economy, while rising interest rates act to deter investment. The risk of a recession has intensified, and as such, it has cut its adspend forecast for this year to 1.6% (from 3.5% previously).

Much of the economic challenges seen at present are likely to spill over into 2023. With interest rates also set to rise further and households and businesses likely to remain in cost-containment mode until inflation comes down, S&P’s GDP forecast for 2023 has been cut from 1.2% to 0.5%, bringing down its adspend growth forecast from 1.8% to 0.8%.

With the growth path beyond 2023 now looking more uncertain amid the potential for these strong downside risks to persist, 2024, 2025 and 2026 adspend growth forecasts have also been trimmed to 1.4% (from 1.7%), 2.0% (from 2.2%) and 2.3% (from 2.4%) respectively.

Retail sector sees 8% increase in revenue across affiliate network
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The retail landscape has seen an 8% increase in revenue year on year (YoY) throughout Q2 of 2022, according to new data from global affiliate marketing platform, Awin.

Despite challenging market conditions, sales were up 4% YoY between April and June, with over £1.2billion in revenue being tracked on the network across 40 different sub-sectors.

Browsing behaviour was an up by 45%, while average order value (AOV) hit £101.27, a £6.52 increase from H1 of 2021. Yet, this increase in spend is likely to be as a result of brands passing extra costs to customers rather than out of choice or to access a better product or service.

Best performing sectors YoY include erotic (+350%), childrenswear (+118%), pharmaceuticals (+37%), pet (+45%), jewellery (+33%) and DIY (+17%).

Retail and travel client partner at Awin, Joelle Hillman, commented: “Many of the sectors that saw growth over the last 24 months and were cited as ‘lockdown trends’, from getting prescriptions online during high street closures to taking on more DIY projects during lockdown.

However, the continued growth in these sectors is a clear indicator that purchase behaviour has moved online, and specifically into the channel, for good.

“We are also seeing the continuation of ‘the lipstick effect’, despite a rise in prices, and decline in disposable income the UK are still keen to treat themselves to life’s little luxuries, with health and beauty up 21% and jewellery up 33%.”

One ‘lockdown trend’ that hasn’t remained however is online alcohol purchases, which are down 39% YoY, as we’re able to enjoy bars and restaurants again, and more recently pub gardens. Computer sales are also down on last year (-22%) as well as office supplies (-23%) now many remote workers are likely to have their home offices fully equipped.

Clothing has also seen strong growth YoY, with menswear sales up by 33%, womenswear up 25%, and childrenswear up 118%.