RANKED: Beauty, Retail, and Apparel, Oct 2024
The Short
October 2024 reveals a fascinating shift in digital engagement strategies, with traditional retailers and beauty brands showing surprising strength in immersive experiences while established apparel brands demonstrate the enduring value of mobile platforms. This month’s data highlights an evolving digital landscape where success increasingly depends on strategic platform choices rather than brand legacy alone.
Our October data reveals both established patterns and surprising disruptions in how consumers engage with brands across immersive and mobile platforms. The numbers tell a story of adaptation, innovation, and the occasional unexpected victory.
Walmart has emerged as October's breakthrough success story, with Walmart Discovered seeing an extraordinary surge to 3.18 million new visits—more than doubling its September numbers. This immersive experience is now outperforming even its own mobile app, which recorded 1.68 million visits. With immersive engagement times averaging 7 minutes compared to 6.6 minutes on mobile, this suggests that well-crafted immersive experiences can rival, and even surpass, traditional digital channels.
Overall, the beauty sector continues to demonstrate the power of immersive experiences, albeit with mixed results. Sunsilk's Hair Care Lab Tycoon, while experiencing a slight decline to 1.44 million visits in October, maintains impressive engagement with an average playtime of 8.6 minutes. L'Oreal Paris Catwalk Simulator shows promising growth with 1.22 million visits, though its average playtime decreased to 5.7 minutes from September's 18 minutes.
Mobile strategies relying on mobile apps like e.l.f. Cosmetics (48,926 visits) and L'Oreal Access (4,320 visits) demonstrate significantly lower traffic than their immersive counterparts, suggesting that beauty brands are finding greater and more consistent engagement on immersive platforms.
Another breakout is Crocs World Tycoon which, despite lower visit numbers, boasts an impressive 13.4-minute average playtime—far exceeding the 3.4 minutes users spend on their mobile app.
Outlook
The October data shows several key trends that brands should consider:
1. Platform Synergy: Success increasingly depends on strategic platform choices that complement rather than compete with each other. Walmart's strong performance across both immersive and mobile platforms exemplifies this approach.
2. Engagement Quality: While mobile apps often lead in visit numbers, immersive experiences frequently deliver longer engagement times. This suggests different platforms might serve different strategic purposes—mobile for transactions and convenience, immersive for brand building and experience.
3. Category-Specific Strategies: What works in one sector might not translate to another. Beauty brands are finding particular success with immersive experiences, while apparel brands often see stronger mobile performance.
As we move toward 2025, these trends suggest that successful digital strategies will require increasingly nuanced approaches to platform selection and experience design. Brands that can effectively balance immersive engagement with mobile convenience while staying true to their category-specific needs will likely see the strongest overall performance.
You may also like our recent report Beyond Mobile, which compared the efficacy of immersive experiences versus traditional digital strategies. Every month ALDORA aggregates the performance and engagement of major brands in immersive environments and across interactive experiences.