The cost of advertising in the field of e-commerce will rise by 80% by the end of the year.

The cost of advertising in e-commerce will rise by 80% by the end of the year, advertising market participants predict. This is due to a drop in demand for increasingly expensive foreign goods, as well as the emergence of the VK Ads platform, which has reduced the stability of advertising results. One of the hardest hit segments is household appliances and electronics. Vendors confirm the rise in advertising costs and clarify that aggressive competition among marketplaces has led to a shortage of conversion traffic.

Kommersant got acquainted with a study by the E-Promo agency, from which it follows that the price of advertising integrations in the field of e-commerce will rise by 80% by the end of the year. The company did not provide absolute figures, adding that “each brand will have its own base from which it builds.” The trend is associated with a drop in demand in response to rising prices for goods due to the weakening ruble, E-Promo believes. Additional factors for the rise in advertising prices were the merger of VK and MyTarget into VK Ads, which “currently reduces the stability of advertising results,” the company added.

The study was conducted in the first half of the year based on an analysis of 52 thousand advertising campaigns with an investment of 4.2 billion rubles. and included contextual advertising in Yandex search results, targeted advertising in MyTarget and VK Ads, as well as display advertising on various Internet resources and marketplaces.

The greatest impact of media inflation (when the growth in the cost of advertising outpaces the growth in the development of distribution channels themselves) was felt by manufacturers of household appliances and electronics, the study says. Thus, receiving online orders through advertising became 55% more expensive for them in the second quarter compared to the first.

According to E-Promo, the cost of attracting an order through advertising in the segment varied (depending on the channel and type of campaign, brand and product) from 241 rubles. up to more than 8 thousand rubles. in the first quarter. In the second quarter, the range was already from 358 rubles. up to 12.5 thousand rubles. Contextual advertising in the category has almost doubled in price. Despite this, the agency clarified, users began to respond more actively to advertisements, which indicates high competition and the importance of relevant offers.

Kuppersberg (manufacturer of household appliances) confirmed that the cost of online advertising has increased by 55%. However, in the second half of the year, “there was an improvement,” said the company’s marketing director, Ivan Nagiba: “The cost decreased by 30%. The trend may be due to seasonal changes in demand for home appliances or changes in the competitive environment that could affect the cost of campaigns.”

Candy also notes an increase in the cost of traffic in search services and targeted advertising sources by 30–50% in the first half of the year. “This is due to the lack of conversion traffic (the percentage of users from the total number of site visitors who completed the target action.— “Kommersant”) due to aggressive competition from marketplaces that are actively investing in promotion,” explains Anton Shveinov, head of direct sales of the manufacturer in Russia. These participants can afford to pay a higher price for a new buyer than an individual seller or vendor, he says. However, for Sandy, marketplaces are also one of the sales channels where the company sees potential for brand growth with a currently lower cost of customer acquisition, added Anton Shveinov.

Schaub Lorenz told Kommersant that they have not observed an increase in advertising costs, but the cost of marketplace commissions has increased by 4% since July: “The cost of the commission directly affects the company’s expenses, which can also be reflected in the cost of equipment.” There are also market factors, such as an increase in product prices by 20–30%, says Olga Dashevskaya, founder and senior partner of the PR Inc agency: “Therefore, the increase in the cost of SMM performance indicators is associated with a narrowing of the target audience. It is important to consider that as the average bill increases, purchasing power decreases. The more expensive the products, the more traffic is needed to achieve the previous sales KPI.”

Yulia Yurasova, Timofey Kornev