Marketplaces drove over 40% of total ecommerce growth in 2024, officially surpassing direct-to-consumer (DTC), wholesale and other channels for the first time, according to research from Cymbio.
At the same time, DTC saw its share of ecommerce growth decline for the first time in years, indicating that following its COVID surge, DTC may be hitting a ceiling.
Cymbio, a marketplace orchestration platform, conducted its research using a combination of proprietary platform data and third-party benchmarks from Emarketer and Capital One.
The study found that one of the biggest reasons for the declining growth of DTC is rising customer acquisition costs (CAC). What once worked — performance marketing on social platforms — has become increasingly expensive and less predictable, leading to eroding margins and plateauing growth.
Meanwhile, brands selling on marketplaces using Cymbio’s platform averaged 40% year-over-year growth in 2024, with some surpassing 200% or even 300% across top marketplaces such as Macy’s, Amazon, TikTok Shop and Saks.
Given these trends, Cymbio projects that marketplaces will account for more than 53% of all ecommerce growth by 2030.
“Our latest research makes it clear that marketplaces are where the momentum lies right now in digital commerce,” said Roy Avidor, CEO of Cymbio in a statement.
This is hard to deny coming out of yet another record-breaking Amazon Prime Day, which this year drove $24.1 billion in online spend over the course of the four-day event.
