Inside our Q3/23 Digital Commerce Spend Report: the latest trends

Our Q3/23 Digital Commerce Spend Report brings you data-driven insights and analysis on spending patterns within digital commerce to help companies identify trends, optimise investment and inform strategic decisions. Download the report here.

With peak season around the corner and a fragile macroeconomic climate, businesses in digital commerce need to be more strategic than ever with their spend to drive peak season sales.

But despite the current climate, Juni customers have proven to be resilient and are succeeding in the growth initiatives by adapting quickly to the changing market.

“In the previous quarter, inventory was the focus as online retailers geared up for peak season. There’s a clear shift in ecommerce businesses’ spending habits, they’re gearing up for a busy Q4. Now, ad campaigns and marketing software investments take centre stage to drive sales,” said Samir El-Sabini, CEO and Co-Founder of Juni.

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Businesses prepare for peak season

As businesses ramp up ahead of peak season, average card spend per business increased by 17.35% in this quarter compared to the same time in 2022 and by 12.5% compared to Q2/23. Last quarter, we saw businesses investing in inventory to prepare for a spike in sales. Now, they’re focussing their spend on advertising to acquire those customers.

Businesses are fuelling growth with average spend on advertising increasing by 49.24% this quarter compared to the same quarter in 2022. Campaigns during the summer months and awareness campaigns to capture customers for the upcoming peak period were the main drivers behind Q3’s increase.

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Meta’s back on top while Amazon is the new challenger

In Q1 this year, Meta’s years-long reign as the preferred ad network ended, with Google taking the top spot. While Google retained its position throughout Q2, things have changed in Q3/23.

Meta’s back in the global top spot, with a 49.2% share of ad budgets. Google came a close second, with a 41.8% share. Although spend on TikTok remained at similar levels to last quarter, the platform lost its spot thanks to a surprise entry from Amazon. Businesses allocated 3.79% of advertising spend to the ecommerce platform, a significant increase from 0.7% in Q2/23.

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Scaled software spend supports sales

In Q2/23, businesses spent 12.9% of their budgets on inventory to stock up ahead of peak season. This quarter, investment in inventory cooled to 9.84% to allocate cash to software, which took 11.42% of budgets instead – a significant increase compared to 4.99% last quarter.

Google is still the preferred vendor by a large margin in the software category. But businesses are also choosing platforms like Klaviyo, LinkVertise, ExoClick and LeadSense, which help drive sales.

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Control your cash flow with Juni

Juni gives businesses in digital commerce the financial tools and intelligence you need to manage and ease cash flow and make smarter decisions, faster.

Gain complete visibility and control over your cash flow with a unified view of your funds, multi-currency business accounts, corporate cards and unparalleled insights and analytics – all in one place.

We can even help boost your bottom line with cashback and extend your runway with fast, flexible financing for everything from media buying to paying suppliers, with up to 90 days to repay.

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Methodology

Insights in this report come from analysing thousands of aggregated and anonymised transactions on Juni cards. SMB digital commerce represents companies with <50 employees. Mid-market digital commerce represents companies with >50 employees. Digital agencies reference both digital marketing and advertising agencies as well as affiliate marketing companies. Quarter-over-quarter comparisons consist of customers who have been active with Juni over the two quarters. Year-over-year comparisons consist of customers who have been active with Juni over that entire 12-month period of time. Numbers were compiled and analysed on a quarterly basis.