Why Rising Costs Are Crushing Ecommerce—and What You Can Do About It

For a long time, ecommerce felt like a growth machine: spin up some paid ads, ship a great product, and scale on repeat. But today, that model is breaking down—and fast. Rising costs across the board are squeezing margins, making it harder for brands to grow, stay profitable, or even survive. We can help you buck this trend

Let’s break down what’s really going on.

Customer Acquisition Costs Are Skyrocketing

Every year, CPCs and CPMs creep higher. What used to be a reliable growth channel—paid media—is getting more expensive each year, with no reverse in that trend in sight. You're paying more for every click, and with platforms automating most of the targeting, you're also getting less control over where those pounds go.

Paid Ads Are Getting Less Effective

It’s not just that ads cost more—it’s that they work less. With auction saturation, recycled creative, and AI-generated content flooding every platform, consumers are tuning out. Standing out is harder than ever, and returns are shrinking.

The Skills Gap Has DisappearedIt used to take serious expertise to run high-performing campaigns. Now, automation and templates have lowered the barrier to entry. Anyone can run ads, which means everyone is running ads. More competition = more noise = higher costs.

Fulfilment Costs Are Squeezing MarginsEven if you can drive traffic and convert, you're still not safe. Shipping, warehousing, and packaging costs are all up. Fast delivery expectations haven’t changed—but the costs to meet them have surged. Brands are paying more just to get products out the door.

Storage Costs Are Climbing TooInventory is expensive to hold. Whether you're using a 3PL or running your own warehouse, storage fees are rising. Stocking enough to meet demand now means tying up more cash and taking on more risk.

Customer Expectations Have Never Been HigherSpeed, service, personalisation—today’s customers want it all, and they want it now. Meeting those expectations requires investment in tech, operations, and support—just to stay competitive.

The Future

With the rise in costs just having a good ad strategy isn’t enough to gain a competitive advantage

Building customer trust and a compelling reason to buy has never been more important, whether that be through social proof on your site, or a clear definition of your brand positioning, just driving traffic to a functional website won’t work any more.

At ascend we’ve adapted our approach in light of the challenges facing the ecommerce industry and developed our Scale Framework, which ensures data and tracking accuracy through our Align proposition, that your ad is being served to the right audience, at the right time, with the right message through our Target proposition, and that you are maximizing the revenue per visitor through extensive, continuous A/B testing and UX refinement through our Scale proposition.

Along with this our proprietary technology platform, the ascend Intelligence Platform gives you access to enhanced data insights to help drive better decision making

Ascend can help you break through these challenges and drive profitable growth. Let’s talk