• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, July 10, 2024

Favorite billing models have emerged for commerce advertising as performance takes a front seat to media buying.

The cost per click (CPC) and cost per order and action (CPO/CPA) models remain the industry’s undisputed favorites, according to data released Wednesday.

Some 51.4% of survey respondents prefer CPCs, and 31.9% favor CPA/CPO, which they call the “more performance-oriented option, regardless of whether they are publishers or advertisers, as the percentages are similar for both groups.”

The report defines commerce advertising as the combination of performance marketing, commerce content, and affiliate marketing. Between June 6 and 18, 2024, 72 industry experts took part in the survey State of Commerce Advertising / 2nd edition of 2024 released by mrge, which supports commerce advertising, on Wednesday.

Nearly 45% of participants were publishers, while around 11% were advertisers, slightly more than 30% were networks or technology providers, and agencies along with other company types collectively made up about 14%.

The data shows “optimism” has become the keyword for the second half of 2024, despite the challenging macroeconomic landscape, with more than 75% of marketers participating in this survey agreeing the second part of this year will be better.

Google updates have presented the advertising industry with a range of challenges, from multiple changes to the ad platforms to less traffic from search engines going to media and ecommerce sites.

Some 61.1% of survey respondents said Google's importance will remain the same, while 25% believe it will be more important than in previous years, and only 13.9% think the search engine will be less of a priority in their strategies.

Commerce advertising is viewed by 75% of respondents as a top revenue generator -- which is not unexpected given the focus of the company that conducted the survey. The media includes coupon pages, influencers, and cashback sites and extensions cited. These were cited as the top three channels. 

Nearly 23.6% of respondents generates more than one-quarter of their revenue through commerce advertising, but that’s down from 52.1% a year ago.

Those making between 15% and 25% of their revenue from this media have seen an increase from 21.9% to 51.4%. Overall, 75% of respondents generate at least 15% of their revenue through commerce advertising, compared with 74% in the prior year.

Some 44.4% of survey respondents said the importance of commerce advertising continues to increase compared to other digital advertising forms. About 51.4% said its importance remains unchanged, while only 4.2% perceive a decline in the relevance.

Some 30.5% of survey participants see AI as having the potential to advance targeting and personalization through audience segmentation or optimization, 27.8% cite the creation of monetizable content, and 25% cite tailor-made content with personalized product recommendations.

For 16.7%, AI has the greatest impact on enhancing campaign optimization through intelligent real-time bidding decisions.