Looking back over the first few months of this year, the retail industry showed no signs of growth, according to ComScore's State of the U.S. Online Retail Economy in Q1 2009. Zero growth is quite a drop considering that online sales grew over 20% every year since 2003 before dipping to 8% in 2008.
While many retailers are having a tough time, we thought we'd look at how the CI Ad Network, our proprietary advertising network, is faring. If you're not familiar with the Ad Network, it's a where-to-buy solution that appears primarily on manufacturer web sites, linking product pages to retailers that have those products available.
Examining data from January through May this year, the following categories averaged positive month-over-month gains on the CI Ad Network:
- Appliances saw an 11% increase in traffic and a 25% increase in sales
- Health Aids and Medicine achieved a 23% increase in traffic and 34% increase in sales
- Baby and Safety Products increased traffic slightly by 1% and garnered 14% more in sales
- Lawn and Garden's seasonal traffic spike of 81% sustained a 92% increase in sales
For some time now we've been seeing that a large segment of customers prefer to buy via trusted channels like a manufacturer's web site. This preference explains why the CI Ad Network is seeing rising sales even while online sales as a whole remain flat. In a down economy, consumers are very selective in their product purchases, which benefits brand conscious manufacturers with a loyal customer base.
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