Industry Insights Blog

Facebook ads vs

08 Jul: Facebook ads vs. Google ads: What you need to know

If you’re looking to advertise your products or services online, you’re probably looking into the two biggest advertising platforms around: Facebook Ads and Google Ads. These two platforms have a number of similarities, but also a large number of differences.
In this post, we’re going to go over some of the most important things you should keep in mind when deciding where…

Smart campaigns helps small businesses reach more customers

07 Jul: Smart campaigns helps small businesses reach more customers

Small businesses are looking for tools to get their business online and reach the right audience. Smart campaigns, built specifically for small businesses, is an automated tool that helps you promote your business on Google. We recently rolled out Google Ads Smart campaigns to all 150 countries where Google Ads is available. Businesses of all sizes can now get ads up…

Amazon gives a glimpse into the future of shoppable television

06 Jul: Amazon gives a glimpse into the future of shoppable television

Shopping on TV may conjure up memories of your grandma watching infomercials or the Home Shopping Network. But Amazon is hoping to reinvigorate the outdated space and transform shoppable television for modern customers.
Shopping through the television isn’t actually that old. QVC, which stands for Quality, Value, Convenience, started in 1986. Many of our parents kept QVC on during the day…

5 Ways to make your surveys matter

05 Jul: 5 Ways to make your surveys matter

Most survey programs provide information: “Our Net Promoter Score (NPS) is 25, up from 22, compared to our competitive benchmark of 30.”  While those figures might be interesting, they don’t provide the context that is essential for prompting action.
As Heart of the Customer has been conducting interviews with CX pros (more than 70 so far this year!), we’ve found some common themes – notably that most programs use NPS as their measurement, and most don’t provide much context for those…

How to use TikTok in your marketing strategy

04 Jul: How to use TikTok in your marketing strategy

TikTok is a social media sensation that marketers can no longer ignore. While the platform is most popular among millennials and Generation Z demographics, it’s becoming the sought-after content destination for influencers, celebrities and even politicians. TikTok boasts over 2 billion downloads from the Apple and Google app stores and has approximately 10.25 million daily active users worldwide. It is also…

The future of shopping will be on Netflix, Amazon Prime Video

03 Jul: The future of shopping will be on Netflix, Amazon Prime Video

As retailers struggle and e-commerce accelerates, there’s a big opportunity for brands, consumers, and streaming services to reinvent the theater of shopping. I know it’s hard to remember back this far, but people used to shop in physical stores. For fun. They went into retailers not just for masks, cans of black beans, and hardware supplies but to have an…

The emergence of mobile gaming as a dominant digital ad platform

02 Jul: The emergence of mobile gaming as a dominant digital ad platform

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 and Instagram are about to become small-business shopping hubs

01 Jul: Facebook and Instagram are about to become small-business shopping hubs

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…

China millionaire livestreamer Viya shows online shopping future

30 Jun: China millionaire livestreamer Viya shows online shopping future

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…

How publishers are supersizing the Holiday gift guide

29 Jun: How publishers are supersizing the Holiday gift guide

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 10 social media metrics you can't afford to forget

28 Jun: The 10 social media metrics you can’t afford to forget

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…

The future of experiential retail in the era of coronavirus

27 Jun: The future of experiential retail in the era of coronavirus

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…

Google Search will now favor websites with great UX

26 Jun: Google Search will now favor websites with great UX

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…

Where and how often do consumers watch live video?

25 Jun: Where and how often do consumers watch live video?

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 ecommerce sales reaching 10 times their pre-pandemic levels in some markets

24 Jun: Ikea ecommerce sales reaching 10 times their pre-pandemic levels in some markets

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 tests a buy button to boost its advertising offer

23 Jun: TikTok tests a buy button to boost its advertising offer

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…

How B2B sellers became DTC brands during the pandemic

22 Jun: How B2B sellers became DTC brands during the pandemic

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…

Why browser fingerprinting is unlikely to succeed

21 Jun: Why browser fingerprinting is unlikely to succeed

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…

The rise of social commerce

20 Jun: The rise of social commerce

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…