News and Analysis
CPG Brands Rethink Advertising Strategy Amid Rising Food Costs, Inflation
While a decrease in food stamp benefits will clearly have the most profound impact on those families receiving benefits, it also marks a shift for supermarkets, retailers, and CPG brands, many of which are now looking to revamp their advertising strategies to account for a greater pool of shoppers searching for discounted items.
Criteo Acquires Brandcrush to Provide Additional Omnichannel Marketing Capabilities
In an effort to continue providing omnichannel monetization solutions for retailers across the globe, Criteo has acquired the Australian platform Brandcrush. Tapping into the combined capabilities of the companies, retail media buyers can now buy and sell inventory online and offline.
Geopath Data Shows Renewed Value of OOH
Geopath just released its 2023 Annual Forecast. For the first time, it includes transit stations, scheduled fleet media (i.e., sides of buses and other forms of transportation), and a new reach and frequency model derived from observed mobile location data. The return to normal makes OOH advertising as valuable as ever.
Commentary
iOS14 and Privacy: What it Means for Advertisers, Especially on Facebook
The latest in the tug of war between consumer privacy and effective digital advertising pits Apple against Facebook, Google, and others. At stake for ad tech: significant revenue for ad publishers and app developers, effective ad results for advertisers, and more relevant ads for consumers. At stake for users: consumer privacy protection, the use of their behavioral data for marketing, and possibly, the future of “free” software.
Apple’s pending release of iOS 14 is a strong consumer-privacy-first stance and a potential disruption to digital marketing as we know it. But what is the real impact for targeted digital advertising?
Standardizing the Definition of Data Quality
Now that companies are using data to drive marketing strategies, product development, and other key business decisions, stakeholders need to know more. They need to know whether data represents an intent signal or an interest signal. They have a right to know the honest origins of the data they’re using — whether it’s been pulled from bidstream or it’s truly opt-in data from a reliable publisher. They deserve to know that the data they’re using has been collected in a privacy-safe manner and if permission has been ethically obtained. Furthermore, business users should have some transparency around modelled data and declared data. They should have visibility into what’s inside each segment.
Despite Covid-19 Environment, Brick-and-Mortar Retailers May Have an Edge
A new survey of more than 1,400 U.S. consumers indicates that more than half are shopping less often and three-quarters are spending less at their favorite stores. That’s not surprising. What is surprising is what the research showed regarding opportunities for retailers to compete against the sheer competitive threat Amazon represents, and that includes the positive impact mobile couponing can have not just for online purchases but to drive in-store traffic as well.
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Direct-to-Consumer Brands Are Winning at Personalized Messaging. Here’s Why
According to new research conducted by Braze, a company that specializes in growth marketing automation, direct-to-consumer brands beat non-direct-to-consumer brands with 58.6% higher messaging open rates across channels.
One reason for the higher open rates is because direct-to-consumer brands show greater willingness to use automation and iteration to personalize messages and speak to customers at a point in the journey when it makes sense for them.
Nextdoor Releases Local Deals to Connect Businesses with Nearby Customers
Nextdoor, the social networking app that requires users to enter a verified address in order to connect neighbors, is announcing local deals, a feature that will allow businesses on the platform to promote sales, discounts, and other offers to nearby customers.
Nextdoor is active in more than 248,000 neighborhoods across 11 countries.
Google Considers Buying TikTok Rival
TikTok could be seen as a competitor for YouTube, the video platform owned by Google’s parent company, Alphabet. TikTok is typically seen as a greater threat to Facebook in the social category, and the social giant is testing a copycat app of its own to crush the insurgent. But more time on TikTok could also mean less time on YouTube in a tight attention economy, and TikTok’s fervent teen users apparently have Google concerned enough to spark a potential Firework deal.
Facebook Marketing Partner Summit 2019: What’s All the Hype about Messaging?
Facebook led the Summit with this very interesting statistic: “There are now more messaging users than social users globally.” While the semantics of “messaging” vs. “social app” draw a fine distinction, on raw user count alone, WhatsApp and Messenger account for 2.9 billion users, and Facebook alone sits at 2.4 billion.
With these numbers in mind, Facebook’s contention is that conversation should be a larger part of the consumer journey when it comes to advertising, even noting that consumers are increasingly expecting to be as well, creating a virtuous cycle of sorts.
LBMA Vidcast: Verizon Media Turns to AR; Uber Testing Essential Grocery Delivery Down Under
On this week’s Location-Based Marketing Association podcast: Verizon Media goes AR, Pared app for restaurants, Veeve re-invents the shopping cart, Uber testing milk/bread delivery in Australia, Albert Heijn piloting their own Amazon GO, Apple quietly adds UWB to iPhone 11.
3 Ways DTC Brands Impact Legacy CPG Playbooks
Direct-to-consumer (DTC) brands have forced legacy CPG brands into a major strategy shift. The rumblings of the digital transformation signaled change was coming, and the rise of DTC brands has led CPGs to rethink consumer engagement and the marketing tactics necessary to achieve that goal. And, in today’s digital-first marketplace, CPG margins are tightening because of the competition from DTCs as well as Amazon’s white-label product lines.
The result of these challenges sees the CPG playbook evolving to meet the digital-first ecosystem through tactics including investing in acquisitions, moving advertising budgets into digital, and including emerging marketing channels such as experiential marketing to create brand awareness and make direct consumer connections.
7 Loyalty Platforms for Restaurants
One area where restaurants have particularly specific needs is in promoting customer loyalty. Vertical-specific loyalty platforms for restaurants tend to have features and capabilities that more generalized loyalty platforms do not. For example, many loyalty platforms for restaurants are tied to reservation systems, so waiters know customers’ preferences before seating them at their tables.
Although the number of loyalty platforms for restaurants is growing every day, we’ve put together a list of seven important players that anyone who is interested in this space should be following.
Physical Stores May Resemble Our Newsfeeds in the Near Future
We’re currently living in a time of unprecedented change in the marketing and advertising industries. One of the most interesting emerging trends is the incorporation of new advertising opportunities within physical stores, in ways that will remind you of your social media newsfeeds.
If you’re a member of Generation X, or even an older Millennial, you probably remember walking through the aisles in grocery stores and grabbing coupons out of plastic dispensers. What we will see occurring in the future is the 21st Century’s version of the coupon machine — the personalized newsfeed-ification of physical stores.
Amazon Pursues Retail-as-a-Service, Looking to Sell Go Tech to Cinemas, Airports
This time, it’s not Amazon Web Services, the cloud underpinning Amazon’s operations and those of other companies around the world, but Amazon’s Go technology that is being peddled to new clients. Bezos’ e-commerce behemoth is in talks to sell the flashy cashierless solution to movie theaters and airports, CNBC reported.
If Amazon is successful, the play to sell Go to other businesses may some day turn what now appears a revolutionary technical advance (with potentially devastating consequences for cashiers) into a commonplace asset. Just as AWS, the B2B play partially financing Amazon’s low-margin retail biz, supports thousands of businesses unbeknownst to their customers, Go-as-a-service could come to change all of retail without many consumers even realizing Amazon is behind changing checkout norms.
Employees Are Connecting On Facebook: Here’s Why They Shouldn’t
When they aren’t connecting in the office, 87% of employees are connecting on Facebook. With more than 1.5 billion daily active users, it’s no surprise that employees flock to the platform to connect with colleagues. Facebook is easy and familiar, and many employees have used it for years. When employees want to connect personally with someone they know professionally, Facebook is the natural first step.
But Facebook isn’t the best place for making personal connections with coworkers, mainly because of the amount of personal content employees post. They express their political opinions and might post jokes and language that could easily offend in a professional setting. When you introduce professional contacts to a personal platform, the lines of what’s appropriate are blurred. People might begin to censor themselves, which isn’t always healthy. Or employees might feel uncomfortable with a coworker based on something they’ve seen online.
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Meta Is Automating Ads, But Brands Still Face a Bigger Problem