With e-commerce accounting for all of the growth in retailing last year and then some, it’s no wonder the competition is fierce among e-retailers to get noticed by online consumers. Evidence is mounting that merchants are pouring more time and money into their digital marketing programs to acquire customers and encourage them to buy more.

In fact, the 13 largest publicly-held web merchants, including Amazon.com Inc., Etsy Inc. and Netflix Inc. upped their collective spending on all online marketing channels by more than 20% year over year, according to the new 2016 Digital Marketing Series. Merchants ranked in the Internet Retailer Top 1000, or the largest online retailers in North America, upped their spending on paid search campaigns last year by 21%. Plus, a recent Internet Retailer survey found that 66% of respondents increased their overall marketing budgets in 2015, including 24% who boosted their spending more than 20%.

Those marketing dollars are working for some retailers better than others, however. The 180-page report reveals the key players that are winning this battle for eyeballs online and driving strong returns on investment through effective marketing on social media, paid and natural search, and email. Readers will learn who the winners are, and what they’re doing to drive success online.

For instance, since noticing in the past year a major uptick in the willingness of mobile consumers to buy high-ticket furniture on smartphones and tablets, web-only housewares merchant Wayfair LLC, which earned the No. 1 spot as the Best Digital Marketer in E-Commerce, has nearly doubled the size of its marketing team and built a proprietary search-engine marketing platform that automates a large share of the retailer’s paid search program. Over the last year, Wayfair’s mobile advertising spending has increased faster than desktop ad spending in every channel.

Other merchants ranked among the leaders are big e-commerce players with large marketing budgets, such as Amazon.com Inc., Groupon Inc. and Overstock.com Inc., as well as smaller and midsized players like Batteries Plus, Bulbs Inc., GlassesUSA.com and B&H Photo-Video. The smaller retailers are reaping rewards just as large as the bigger marketers, with relatively small but smart investments in advanced email, search and social media marketing strategies.

The report, broken into four sections, scores online retailers on their success in these channels through an algorithm that factors in 36 metrics, including the percentage of site traffic each retailer receives from the online marketing channels—paid search, natural search, email and social media—in addition to estimates on monthly paid search spending, organic search rankings, social media engagement and other data points.

Included in the report are rankings of America’s 50 best overall e-commerce marketers, the 100 best e-retailers in search marketing, the 50 best social media marketers and the best email marketing retailers in North America. In-depth analysis, case studies and feature articles break down the intricacies of each channel and reveal strategies to drive measurable results.

The Digital Marketing Report Series Includes:
– Rankings of America’s Best Marketers in E-Commerce
– The 50 Best Retailers in Social Media Marketing
– The 50 Best Retailers in Natural Search
– The 50 Best Retailers in Paid Search
– The 50 Best Retailers in Email Marketing

For details, pricing and more information on the 2016 Digital Marketing Report Series click here.