What’s New and Notable in Digital Advertising for 2023

I In reviewing the 2023 Digital Advertising Benchmarks for Agrimarketers, there are a few new and notable trends that we saw. Here are some key points for you to take note of as you plan your digital agrimarketing campaigns for 2023.

Strategic Shift

Widespread adoption of funnel-based marketing is impacting performance and costs. Five years ago, most digital campaigns in agriculture were focused on the same objective – clicks. As a result, campaigns that should have been more focused on the top-of-funnel were overpaying for results that didn’t really matter, and campaigns that should have been focused on bottom-of-funnel were underperforming.

What we’re seeing now is more clarity on what a successful campaign outcome looks like – impressions, video views, clicks or conversions. This helps campaigns become more efficient and effective at achieving that key objective.

What Agrimarketers Need to Know:

Clearly define your campaign objectives. What does success look like? If traffic is the goal, invest in your website to make the most of that campaign traffic. If awareness is the goal, make your creative as attention-grabbing as possible.

Increasing Costs

We noticed CPC and CPM costs starting to rise in 2021. This is likely a result of (a) increased competition, fueled by the rapid adoption of digital tactics due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and (b) inflationary cost pressures coming from digital advertising platforms.

What Agrimarketers Need to Know:

Digital advertising campaigns in 2023 may achieve lower performance compared to previous years because of increasing costs. To help drive efficiency in your campaigns, optimize your campaigns to the single most critical outcome.

Adoption of New Tactics

Every digital marketer is trying to find an edge that will make their campaigns stand out. In 2022 we saw many new platforms move from experimentation into standard adoption. This could include new social advertising platforms for agriculture, or new programmatic options including audio, native and connected TV. Most digital advertising spend is still dedicated to display, search, and social, but these new platforms are slowly adding to the mix.

What Agrimarketers Need to Know:

Digital marketing has always been rooted in experimentation and growth. Reserve some of your media budget to try new tactics and platforms to see what can work to reach your audience.

Traffic Remains The Focus

There's been a strategic shift that’s bringing the right focus to the right objectives; however, traffic-driving campaigns have remained the focus. In the campaigns that we assessed, campaigns with a traffic objective made up 42.9% of the spend, followed by video views with 26.4% of spend in 2022. Traffic can be a good focus for a campaign, but it often requires significant improvements to the content and user experience of the destination website.

What Agrimarketers Need to Know:

To make the most of the traffic that you are driving to your website, invest appropriately in content and user experience improvements.

As we continue to advance through 2023, we expect these trends to continue shifting the agrimarketing space. Focusing on clearly defined objectives and experimenting with new platforms has already created tons of new growth for agrimarketers – don't fall behind the curve!