News and Analysis
Brands Test Both Luxury and Accessible Metaverse Marketing Campaigns
Luxury fashion brands like Gucci and sports retailers like Nike are selling digital versions of popular real-world products for thousands of dollars in the metaverse, and the fast-fashion retailer Forever 21 is selling products in Roblox that cost less than $1 each. The high/low approach is just one of many being tested by big name brands.
What Every Marketing Team Needs to Thrive in 2022
The economic headwinds businesses face today make it even more important for marketing teams to work smarter in order to drive growth. Businesses should be stepping up their local marketing efforts and running more hyperlocal campaigns if they want to continue to grow through the second half of the year and the first half of 2023.
Commentary
How Agencies and Advertisers Can Target Relevant Audiences During Covid-19
Since establishments have limited services to take-out, pick-up or delivery, advertisers are creating geofences where they know consumers are still going. Rather than using the actual footprint of a restaurant, advertisers can use custom polygons to include the pick-up area in the parking lot or the QSR’s drive-through area.
Getting creative to find restaurant audiences is just the tip of the iceberg, however. Even when large portions of the population are staying home, there are ways to find and advertise to audiences that are high-intent in a range of consumer categories. There are several commercial and public locations that you can target to help find audiences that are relevant to your clients and your campaigns. Below I detail optimal strategies for major categories of brick-and-mortar physical businesses.
The Largest 2020 Ecommerce Driver is Global Expansion
Ecommerce is now a staple in everyday life, so much so that Americans spent $154.5 billion online in the third quarter of 2019, according to a US Census estimate. Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic has forced business for the near future to be almost completely online.
While this transition will take some getting used to, it also affords the opportunity to reach across conventional borders. We’ve moved beyond the novelty of being able to buy something online and receive it quickly. As we look to what the next 25 years have in store, continued success in the ecommerce world depends on superior customer experience — meeting customers where they are and when they need it most.
Latest Posts
How Brands Are Using AI to Fight Back Against Dark Marketing
According to some estimates, as many as 85% of Facebook ads and 60% of YouTube ads are hidden from public view. The practice is even more common on Twitter, where an estimated 90% of ads are hidden. What does that mean, exactly? Rather than posting their messages publicly, major brands are creating social media posts or sponsored content that is only shown to targeted audiences. Unlike organic or boosted posts, these targeted ads don’t show up on the company’s timelines or all of their followers’ feeds.
Consumers Willing to Forgo Privacy, For a Price
New research indicates that consumers are actually more aware of how their personal information is being used today than they were last year, with those ages 55 and above showing the greatest level of awareness. These consumers are increasingly willing to share their personally identifiable information with brand marketers—with one caveat. They want a reward for doing it.
Superbowl Ad Roundup: The Local Edition
Several Superbowl ads touched on key themes in local such as multi-location brand advertisers (Burger King) and locally relevant technology like voice search (Amazon Alexa). And of course, there were lots of car commercials—an inherently local product category given the offline shopping component.
Alphabet Plays the Long Game, Expanding and Investing in R&D, with Focus on Video
Alphabet is investing in its future, spending record funds on R&D and pouring money into non-core businesses such as self-driving cars (Waymo) and its video platform (YouTube). While the company exceeded analyst expectations on the back of ever-strong growth from its core search business, it was actually trading down on Monday, reflecting investor anxiety over the cost and ultimately profitability of its many secondary businesses.
Google’s Soft-Power Approach to Super Bowl Ads
When it came to the Super Bowl, Google opted not to put the spotlight on flashy new products but rather to emphasize the good it can do for the world at a time when it’s “don’t be evil” slogan of yore has become prime material for parody. During the big game, ads for products as seemingly disparate as Pringles, tax software, and beer pointed to a present haunted by tech’s infiltration of domestic life and machines’ superiority to humans.
Why Ad Tech Needs to Shift Toward a Managed-Service Model
Alexandra Theriault: The expense of in-housing and the programmatic talent shortage are long-term issues. Currently, in-housing runs contrary to the general trend of reliance on outsourcing and on-demand technologies (like SAAS) that allow businesses to focus on their core competencies instead of wasting resources on peripheral concerns. That’s why, although it might seem like the market is going to a self-service model, for many marketers it’s not the most practical or efficient option.
Brandify, PlaceIQ, Simpli.fi Among 2019 LSA Ad-to-Action Award Finalists
The Local Search Association announced this week a slate of 20 finalists for its annual awards celebrating the best in local and online-to-offline marketing. Among more than 80 submissions, the finalists have been recognized for their outstanding work in such categories as reputation management, SMB software, and local search.
While Sales Growth Rate Slows, Amazon Marketplace, Cloud, and Ad Businesses Point to Long-Term Prosperity
For brands hoping to compete with Amazon (and potentially looking on with relief at a sign of fallibility from their digital rival), the company’s earnings report brings the news that Amazon Marketplace, where third-party sellers can reach customers, is doing more than twice as much in sales as Amazon’s first-party retail platform. Marketplace is troubled by bad practices and fake reviews, and its prosperity suggests the growing challenge for brands to get customers to even go to their sites at a time when Amazon is essentially the homepage of the commerce-oriented Internet.
As Voice Gets Established, Brands Grapple with Implementation
Consumer demand for voice technology has never been greater, and industry heavyweights like Google and Amazon are gearing up for a platform war as they work to integrate voice assistants into virtually every area of the connected consumer’s life. But behind the scenes, many brand marketers are struggling to connect the dots and design campaigns around a technology they don’t fully understand.
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