Written by: Mariana Fonseca, Editorial Team, DTCROAS
Key Takeaways
- e-Commerce customer acquisition costs (CACs) now range from $68 to $130, with Meta CPM at $10.88 and Google Shopping CPC at $3.49, which signals channel saturation.
- Mobile gaming reaches over 1 billion users, and 71% of buyers purchase on the same day after seeing an ad, creating high-intent incremental growth.
- Strengthen core channels such as Pay-Per-Click (PPC), social, display, email, and SEO (Search Engine Optimization) while adding video formats to offset rising costs.
- Axon by AppLovin delivers about 35 seconds of attention through full-screen video ads in apps and games, using AI-based advertising to hit Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) and Cost Per Purchase (CPP) targets quickly.
- Brands like Portland Leather and MAËLYS achieved 65% higher ROAS and rapid scaling with Axon, so launch a test campaign to see whether you can replicate these results.
Executive Framework: 7-Strategy Diversification Playbook
Successful e-Commerce advertising in 2026 relies on seven connected strategies. The first five strengthen your existing channels: (1) Pay-Per-Click, (2) Social media advertising, (3) Display and retargeting, (4) Email and affiliate marketing, and (5) SEO and content marketing. These create your performance foundation.
The final two strategies, (6) Video and emerging formats and (7) Diversification through platforms like Axon, form your growth layer. They capture attention and audiences that your core channels miss.
The key insight is simple. Blend proven channels with incremental opportunities. Portland Leather achieved 65% higher ROAS and over 8,000 new customer acquisitions after adding Axon to their media mix. This shift delivered measurable growth without cannibalizing existing performance.
Part 1: Core Channel Optimization (Strategies 1–5)
Pay-Per-Click (PPC) remains a core driver of high-intent traffic, even as costs climb. Google Ads CAC varies widely for B2C e-Commerce brands, and average CPC has risen by 12.88% year over year. To protect margins, focus on high-intent keywords, tighten negative keyword lists, and use dynamic search and Shopping campaigns to capture demand efficiently.
Social media advertising builds demand before people search, but it now faces saturation. Facebook Ads CAC ranges from about $20.47 to $39.03 by industry, and the median Meta Ads Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) across 35,000 e-Commerce brands is $38.19. To keep results strong, rotate fresh creative, test new hooks, and expand audiences beyond narrow lookalike segments.
Display and retargeting keep your brand in front of warm prospects and often deliver strong remarketing ROAS. Scale has become harder as privacy regulations limit tracking and shrink retargetable pools. First-party data collection now matters more than ever because owning your audience data helps maintain performance as third-party tracking disappears.
Email and affiliate marketing deepen relationships with people who already know your brand. Klaviyo benchmarks show automated email flows generate high revenue per recipient, and top performers see outsized returns. Automated flows represent only 5.3% of sends yet drive nearly 41% of total email revenue, which makes lifecycle automation a reliable profit center.
While email nurtures existing customers, SEO and content marketing bring new visitors into the funnel. This channel compounds over time but needs consistent investment. Product-focused content, technical SEO improvements, and helpful guides capture organic traffic as paid media costs continue to rise.
Part 2: Growth Channels (Strategies 6–7)
Strategy 6: Video and Emerging Formats for Demand Creation
Video advertising matches how shoppers now discover products. Bazaarvoice reports that 46% of shoppers find short-form videos such as Reels and TikTok influential, and many Gen Z buyers use TikTok as a product search engine.
Social video still faces the “thumb-stop” challenge, where you must earn attention within one or two seconds before users scroll. That tiny window restricts storytelling and limits intent-building. Mobile gaming environments solve this problem because users stay engaged for longer sessions and focus on a single full-screen experience.
Strategy 7: Diversification Through Axon
Axon represents a major diversification opportunity for e-Commerce brands that feel stuck in saturated channels. The platform runs full-screen video ads across mobile apps and games, creating the extended attention windows mentioned earlier, which far exceed typical social media engagement.
The platform operates without traditional learning phases, so performance optimization starts quickly. Brands set ROAS or CPP targets, and Axon uses AI-based advertising to manage audience targeting and creative decisions. As one example, MAËLYS scaled to $200,000 in daily spend within one week while beating their ROAS goal by 10%.
Three campaign types give you control over how you grow. Universal campaigns optimize for total conversions across all audiences. Prospecting campaigns focus on net-new buyers. Discovery campaigns reach entirely new audiences who have never interacted with your brand, and initial tests showed Discovery campaigns more than doubled new visitor percentages.
Use Axon to reach mobile app and game users who sit outside your current social and search footprint. Launch your first campaign to access these audiences and add revenue that does not replace your existing channel performance.
Implementation Workflow and Performance Examples
Axon onboarding stays simple so teams can move fast. Most brands complete setup in under one hour because the workflow follows a clear sequence.
First, upload 9:16 vertical video creatives. Existing Meta Reels or Stories usually work immediately, which removes production delays. Next, connect the Shopify pixel with a single click to enable accurate conversion tracking.
After that, set your ROAS or CPP targets and launch campaigns. The AI-based optimization described earlier then takes over, which means you can start making scaling decisions from day one instead of waiting weeks for algorithms to stabilize.
Performance data from multiple brands supports this approach. HexClad’s Haus GeoLift test showed Axon generated more than $1 million in incremental revenue with a 13% lift in new customer orders. In the same study, Northbeam reported that 90% of Axon-driven customers were first-time buyers and that ROAS was 53% higher than HexClad’s largest paid social channel.
Prescient’s Marketing Mix Modeling (MMM) analysis found that Axon delivers about 1.7 times higher ROAS than Meta on average, although at smaller initial scale. Top brands now allocate 5% to 25% of weekly budgets to the platform, and leading advertisers spend $75,000 or more per day.
Matt Fey of Portland Leather summarized the value clearly. “AppLovin has become a trusted partner and a major part of our growth strategy. It is now one of our largest paid sources of new customers. The fact that this performance is validated across third party platforms gives us a lot of confidence in AppLovin as an incremental channel.”
Measurement and Attribution Best Practices
Effective measurement focuses on incrementality, not just last-click attribution. Axon connects with leading measurement platforms, including Northbeam, Triple Whale, and Haus, to provide unified analytics. Triple Whale’s correlation analysis confirmed that Portland Leather’s Axon performance was uncorrelated with other channels, which showed truly additive growth.
Track key performance indicators such as ROAS, CPP, new customer acquisition rate, and incrementality lift. In one example, MAËLYS saw 94% of purchases occur within one hour of click, which highlights the strong purchase intent of mobile gaming audiences.
Creative execution also affects results. Longer videos between 30 and 60 seconds usually outperform short clips repurposed from social platforms because they use the extended attention window more effectively. The platform’s creative studio and AI Interactive Generator help teams build and test these interactives quickly.
If you want to validate incremental ROAS using your existing analytics stack, connect Axon with tools such as Northbeam, Triple Whale, or Haus. Set up a campaign with measurement integration so you can track additive revenue from day one.
Conclusion and Next Steps
e-Commerce advertising success in 2026 depends on diversification across both proven and emerging channels. Traditional platforms now face rising costs and saturation, yet brands that test incremental channels such as Axon can still unlock new growth.
The seven-strategy framework gives you a practical roadmap. Strengthen core channels, invest in video formats, and expand into high-intent audiences beyond social feeds. With more than $11 billion in annual advertiser spend, Axon offers a scaled way to reach mobile gaming’s billion-user audience.
Apply this framework now and treat Axon as your test bed for incremental audiences. Launch an Axon campaign, reach mobile gaming users at scale, and measure the additional revenue against your current mix.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need to create entirely new ads for mobile gaming platforms?
You can start with existing 9:16 vertical video assets from Meta Reels or Stories. For stronger performance, build 30 to 60 second videos that use the longer attention spans in mobile gaming environments. The platform’s creative studio and AI Interactive Generator help you produce high-performing interactives quickly without heavy production work.
How quickly can I see results from diversifying into mobile gaming advertising?
Axon’s AI-based advertising begins optimizing performance immediately instead of waiting through long ramp-up periods. Most brands see meaningful data within the first day of launch, which supports rapid scaling decisions. The performance-based model then shifts budget toward what works, so you can increase spend confidently from the start.
What makes mobile gaming audiences different from social media users?
Mobile gaming users are in a lean-forward, focused state, unlike the rapid scrolling behavior on social feeds. They already understand in-app purchases and digital transactions and often engage for extended gameplay sessions. This context supports deeper storytelling and stronger intent-building than the one to two second “thumb-stop” window on social media.
How do I measure incrementality when adding new advertising channels?
Use third-party measurement platforms such as Northbeam, Triple Whale, or Haus to evaluate performance across your full media mix. Look for correlation analysis that shows new channels driving uncorrelated growth instead of shifting conversions from existing sources. Geo-lift testing remains the gold standard because it compares test markets to control groups to quantify true lift.
What budget allocation should I consider for diversification efforts?
Begin with 5% to 10% of your total advertising budget for testing new channels such as mobile gaming. Top-performing brands often move to 15% to 25% of media spend once they confirm incremental results. The goal is to protect performance on core channels while scaling diversification gradually based on validated outcomes.
