Industry Insights Blog

Heading into 2020, digital marketing experts had no shortage of predictions; then a global pandemic and the subsequent quarantine upended all of them. Or at least, almost all of them.  To discuss what has happened to marketing across the first half of 2020, Digiday recently caught up with Matt Barash, svp of strategy and business development at AdColony, who told…

Facebook is targeting small merchants with a new ‘Shops’ feature, letting them promote collections of goods within Facebook and Instagram As online shopping continues to be a lifeline for many stuck at home during the coronavirus pandemic, Facebook is announcing on Tuesday that it’s rolling out a new shopping feature on its namesake platform and Instagram. The new concept lets businesses…

A millionaire at 34 and bigger than “Sunday Night Football,” China’s star saleswoman Viya rules a $60 billion world of live online shopping. Huang Wei can sell anything. For instance: In April, Huang—known professionally as Viya—sold a rocket launch for around 40 million yuan ($5.6 million). The live, online shopping extravaganza the 34-year-old hosts most nights for her fans across China is part…

For years, media brands have made an annual event out of their holiday gift guides. Now, they’re using that influence to sell stuff through dedicated online shops, retail pop-ups, exclusive products and branded merch. Take American Vogue as an example. This year, Vogue is betting readers want to buy a bit of its own brand, too. Readers can purchase, among other…

The more data we collect about our marketing activities, the more doors can open to lead us to further success. Publishing articles, sending messages, and posting on social media are all activities that businesses can track and measure in one way or another to help them determine how close they are to hitting their goals. 
The lists of metrics accompanying each marketing…

In the short term, brands have been moving online to engage consumers, but with stores reopening, retailers will have to shift away from or reimagine high-touch services. What’s the purpose of a store? Technically, it’s to offer up products to customers and, more importantly, get them to buy those products. But in recent years, the purpose of a store has been…

There are few things more annoying than a website that doesn’t work how you expect it to. Slow load times, badly designed (or intentionally misleading) interfaces, and pages that shift in place as they load distract from the content on the page, making it hard to get information you need—and are just plain frustrating. So Google is stepping in. As part…

By 2027, the live video market is expected to surpass $184 billion. And brands are taking notice. By the end of 2018, marketers were using live video as part of their social media strategy. Since then, this number has likely grown as brands continue to use a number of online platforms to stream virtual events, Q&As, and other content that their…

Ikea has been voted the most successful retailer during the coronavirus lockdown thanks to its ability to roll with the punches and “grow their ecommerce revenue”.
The Swedish furniture giant, which reopened its physical stores to the public last week to queues of shoppers which often lasted four hours, has been the most successful in altering it operations to perform during…

TikTok has been in the press these days. The social media has passed the 2 billion downloads mark, notably by attracting a new target of users, and is testing new advertising formats to attract advertisers and content creators. The Covid-19 crisis and the associated containment had a direct impact on the use of social media. Beyond the committed speeches and solidarity…

The direct-to-consumer brand revolution has been going strong for a decade, but the coronavirus pandemic has created new opportunities for B2B and wholesale manufacturers to flood the consumer market.
Rastelli’s, a New Jersey-based food supplier, fortuitously started a consumer branding business last year, said director of marketing Zachary Paul. Instead of selling products through grocers or wholesale, where its products are…

Safari and Firefox blocked third-party cookies and Google announced that it will do the same for Chrome before the end of 2021. This creates a challenge for ad tech vendors and advertisers who rely on these cookies for audience targeting, frequency capping and attribution. As a result, vendors are looking for workarounds to maintain their current ways of working. Fingerprinting…

Social commerce is a subset of e-commerce and more broadly retail. It’s the evolution and maturation of social media meeting shopping. Essentially allowing a transactional relationship to take place between customers and sellers, enabled by social media. The breakthrough of Social Commerce is logical but also society driven. What’s happening today isn’t just circumstantial, COVID-19 heralds an inevitable and palpable shift in…

Pinterest’s Jeremy King talks about COVID-19’s impact on social media marketing and retail. Pinterest has been a clear winner as more shoppers have more time on their hands. The site has more than 367 million global monthly active users and engagement with shoppable Product Pins increased 44 percent year-over-year.
Jeremy King, senior vice president of technology for Pinterest, joined the company in…

As Amazon solves its Covid-19 shipping delays, TikTok has emerged as an unlikely source of beauty sales for the platform. A growing number of beauty brands, especially independent labels, have launched official shops on Amazon as it has increased its focus on the beauty category. Despite logistics setbacks during the first two months of coronavirus shutdowns in the U.S., shipping times have…

Many marketers love to hate the preference center. They argue that subscribers rarely use them beyond providing the initial required opt-in or registration information.
And it is true. Generally, it takes needing to change their email address or a desire to unsubscribe or reduce the frequency of emails to motivate someone to visit your preference center.
But that doesn’t mean you should…

Inactive subscribers – those who haven’t opened or clicked in some defined timeframe — have a significant impact on your email marketing program. Having too many of them can lead to reduced deliverability, inaccurate analysis of your email performance, reduced ROI and, most importantly, lost opportunity.
To best address and get your arms around the challenge of inactive subscribers, I recommend…

A simple yet breakthrough live streaming technology invaded the market in 2016. Platforms like Twitch, YouTube, and Mixer are capitalizing on the trend of live streaming, which has taken off at a staggering speed. The industry’s value is expected to reach $184.3 billion by 2027.
This growth is not surprising, considering video is the most-consumed type of content in every user…

Marketers are living in a world where the delivery of customer experiences is front and center and always-on – it’s where brands live and die. “Experience” and “easy” are the new “loyalty” for customers. When experiences are easy, simple to follow, rewarding, and personalized, it can make or break your business. 
But, with so many players in a company having a…