We know that CBD safety has long been a concern for FDA. The subcommittee hearing of the House Oversight Committee in 2023 included strong testimony regarding CBD safety, along with regulatory recommendations from industry experts to advocate for FDA and Congress to regulate CBD as a dietary supplement and food and beverage additive. We strongly agree with this recommendation and believe that current regulations governing dietary supplements are the starting point to establish a regulatory framework for the CBD industry. The absence of federal regulation has led many states to enact regulations that are extremely challenging and costly for companies to comply with. This creates confusion for both retailers and consumers and creates an environment where bad actors are allowed to participate.
However, we will continue our active involvement at both the federal and state level and will remain persistent in pushing Congress, FDA and other federal and state agencies to make progress. We all know that a sensible regulatory framework will significantly benefit our industry and consumers will lead to further investment into scientific research, will attract new investors and will create an environment where quality companies and products can be trusted to grow the category responsibly. A few comments on our drug development program and treatment of smokeless tobacco use and addiction. During 2023, the company received its formal certificate of grant from the Japan Patent Office for its patent application 721-6697 for our drug development assets.
This patent covers methods of treating smokeless tobacco addiction by administering pharmaceutical formulations containing CBD and nicotine. CV Sciences has also filed corresponding patent applications that provide similar patent protection in additional key commercial markets with patents already granted in the United States, Canada, Australia, Germany, Great Britain, France, Spain, Netherlands and Italy. We continue to believe this program and assets have value and we are seeking collaboration partners to financially support this effort. Many of the challenges in our industry continue, but we are positioning our company to compete in the current environment. During 2023, we continue to streamline our operations, increase cost efficiency and realign the company for growth and profitability.
We have made great progress in structuring a very lean, cost-efficient organization that has positioned to leverage our strengths, which includes our employees, the quality of our products, the trust in our brand and the strength of our distribution. We will be able to achieve profitability and cash flow positive at a much lower revenue number than many of our competitors because of the tough decisions that we have made and our much lower business model cost. Let me pause now and I will turn the call over to Joerg.
Joerg Grasser: Thank you, Joe, and also good morning to everyone. During fiscal year 2023, we saw the results of several of our key initiatives, which we talked about in previous earnings calls. We maintain our top line revenue at $16 million in a very competitive market where most of our competitors are experiencing sales declines. We also continue to see a positive financial impact of our cost efficiency measures across all functional areas of the company. Over the last several years, we have significantly reduced our cost structure without significant productivity losses and we are well positioned for operating leverage as we continue to increase our revenues, all with the main goal of creating shareholder value. Our fourth quarter revenue decreased slightly by 2% to $3.8 million compared to $3.9 million in the fourth quarter of 2022.
Our unit sales declined by 6.7% in fiscal year ’23 compared to fiscal year 2022, offset by higher average sales prices per unit of 5.8%. We were able to take market share from our competitors across all of our sales channels, including the natural product channel and B2C. Our new product introductions were successful and our team is doing an effective job on executing on our go-to-market strategy. New products introduced since the beginning of 2022, represented 33% of our fiscal 2023 revenues, which shows the importance of new product innovation. The overall CBD market continues to be fragmented and very competitive. We don’t see this changing anytime soon, but we see further brand consolidation and brand contraction, which are opportunities to further increase our market share and our revenue base.
Our direct-to-consumer business continues to perform well with reduced digital marketing spend and associated sales represented 46.5% of total revenue in the fourth quarter compared to 46.2% a year earlier and 40.9% in the third quarter of 2023. Our B2C revenue for the fourth quarter 2023 increased on a sequential basis by 6%. Our team made solid improvements throughout 2023 to our main digital KPIs. We were able to continue to increase our visits to our website despite lower paid advertising spend. Our e-commerce team also made good improvements to our subscription and loyalty programs and increased our overall customer list, all good signs for growth in this channel. Gross margin for the fourth quarter of 2023 was 45.8%, our best gross margin in the last nine quarters.
We recognized gross margin of 40.4% in the fourth quarter of 2022 and 45.1% in the third quarter of 2023. Gross margin improved for the full fiscal year 2023 to 44.3%, significantly up from 34.2% in 2022. The improvement in gross margin compared to prior year is mostly due to reduced shipping and fulfillment costs, lower overall overhead as well as higher average sales prices. We are working on further cost efficiencies, especially in the area of shipping and fulfillment in order to further improve our gross margins and increase our gross profit. We anticipate that we can further reduce our shipping and fulfillment costs and realize additional cost savings of approximately $40,000 per month starting in the second half of 2024. SG&A expense for the fourth quarter was $2.6 million, down from $3.6 million a year ago.
