7 Shoppable Video Platforms
How do you engage customers when in-store shopping is in many places all but obsolete? One solution that brand retailers around the country have been digging into this year is shoppable video. Using recorded and live video streams, brands have been able to capitalize on the shift toward mobile video and give customers direct links to buy their products online.
Here are seven examples of shoppable video platforms brands are using right now.
Location Weekly: Party City and Nextdoor Launch Halloween Campaign
In this episode of Location Weekly, the Location-Based Marketing Association covers Ferrara’s Trolli brand creating an AR game for Halloween, Party City and NextDoor launching a Halloween campaign, Burberry teaming with IBM for product traceability, and Walmart redesigning its stores with a touch of airport way-finding tech.
Why Creative is Paramount for This Year’s Holiday Ads
When marketers are all using the same platforms and automation tools to bid and compete against each other this holiday season (like with Facebook Automated App Ads and Google App Campaigns), the key differentiator will be ad creative. Preparing an arsenal of high-performing creative will be critical to advertisers in order to keep costs down and be effective this year.
What Happens to Drive-to-Store Campaigns After Apple’s IDFA Update?
Given that Apple’s Limit Ad Tracking feature already renders roughly one-third of iOS users totally anonymous, drive-to-store conversion measurement has been limited at the device-level for some time. The iOS 14 update from Apple simply adds another challenge on top of what was already a difficult endeavor. For marketers who haven’t done so yet, they should take this opportunity to pivot to measurement strategies that are less reliant on the ever-shifting policies of tech giants like Apple.
Location Data Says Krispy Kreme’s Times Square Plan May Be Half-Baked
As someone who studies human mobility in New York routinely, I am compelled to question the pandemic-era business logic behind this aggressive expansion. The world will go back to normal or something like it one day, but, by using our human mobility data sets and assuming a continuation of current trends, we can see there is little evidence that these new Krispy Kreme locations will draw enough foot traffic in the coming months and quarters to survive, let alone thrive.
Heard on the Street, Episode 57: Streamlining the Digital Ad Stack
What can one learn through a combination of the Peace Corps, CPA training, and the ad tech world? On Street Fight’s Heard on the Street Podcast, we often talk about the virtues of “cross-training” in a given career path. Perhaps no one embodies that principle more than VRTCAL founder Todd Wooten.
Covid-19 is Boosting Mobile Use, and These Apps Are Taking the Lion’s Share
With many social options put on hold, people find solace in retail therapy. Between April 2019 to 2020, the cost to acquire a user who completes a first purchase in a shopping app has decreased by more than half (50.6%), compared to the same period in 2018. Similarly, the cost to acquire a registration ($8.76) has dropped nearly 40%.
Plus, with a 40% increase in purchase engagement year-on-year — and 110% increase over two years — it’s clear conditions are positive for marketers to reach and engage a highly motivated, high-value audience.
How Small Businesses Can Conquer E-Commerce for the Holidays
As the pandemic continues, consumers are shifting their expectations of brands as well. They don’t just want coupons in their email anymore, they expect an intuitive browsing and checkout process, accurate inventory and out-of-stock notifications, curbside delivery, and fast shipping.
E-commerce is already a must-have, and small businesses who understand this and take steps to offer their customers a way to buy online will create a memorable experience, more long-term loyalty, and ultimately more sales this holiday season.
Mobile Ad Network Vungle Acquires Mobile Ad Platform AlgoLift
Vungle helps mobile app developers monetize their apps through advertising and connects advertisers with mobile app media. The AlgoLift purchase will help Vungle’s advertisers better solve for attribution and optimize in-app ad spend.
Facebook, Holocaust Denial, and the Refusal of Politics
Facebook’s long-term refusal to strike down Holocaust-denial content is not a problem specific to Facebook. It’s not a decision limited to Zuckerberg or a few feckless executives. The problem is not even limited to tech.
Facebook’s purported refusal of politics — its reluctance to accept that it has always been a political actor and that its content-moderation policies and algorithms have real-world effects on what people believe and what they do, up to and including acts of physical violence as in Myanmar — is a structural feature of shareholder capitalism. A content ecosystem whose leaders are so timid as to let Holocaust denial flourish is the logical result of an approach to management that views its only responsibility as minimizing costs and maximizing market capitalization.
How In-House Agencies Can Provide Value During and After Covid-19
When asked what the most critical resources for producing ads post Covid-19 were, 55% of ANA members said in-house teams, as compared to 42% for other internal teams and 26% for external agencies.
In many respects, Covid just accelerated the already impressive growth of in-housing. Moving forward, these teams’ proximity to the business and growing strategic importance mean they are in a good position to deliver greater value to their organizations in three critical ways.
CCPA’s Impact: Businesses Prepare for Fall Surge in Data Subject Requests
In a customer set with more than 16 million consumer records — with consumer records being defined as a single, individual record associated with a unique email address within a database — DataGrail found that people are largely taking action to control their privacy by exercising rights provided by the CCPA.
Consumers opt-out of their personal information being sold “most” of the time, and deletion requests make up 31% of all data subject requests. Twenty-one percent of consumers have accessed their data thanks to the new regulations.
Here’s Why October Is the Perfect Time to Pressure-Test Holiday Strategies
With consumers still spending – and their evolving shopping preferences and behaviors becoming increasingly clear for Halloween and beyond – October presents a prime opportunity for retailers to pressure-test and refine their holiday 2020 strategies.
Here are three considerations as we enter one of the most critical quarters in retail’s history.
Location Weekly: BMW Geo-Fencing, Gimbal Acquiring TrueX, Amazon One Payments
In this episode of Location Weekly, the Location-Based Marketing Association covers BMW geo-fencing E-Drive zones, IKEA’s “Buy With Time” campaign in Dubai, Gimbal acquiring TrueX from Disney, and Amazon One letting you pay with a wave of your hand.
Self-Serve Restaurant Ordering in a Post-Covid World
We expect to see a continued rise in touchless retail shopping and contactless transactions à la Amazon Go Stores.
But one of the less-discussed technologies in the Covid-advantaged bucket is self-serve mobile restaurant ordering. The idea is that ordering and paying from your table can reduce server interaction — which has Covid and non-Covid benefits considering it can save diners’ lives and their time.
Putting Context Over Coordinates with New Location Encoding Standard
Context over coordinates. That’s the premise behind a new standard universal location ID called Placekey, which launches publicly today.
By offering a standard for identifying any physical place, the team behind Placekey is betting that advertisers and other data scientists will have an easier time joining disparate datasets and unlocking deeper insights. The platform was developed by SafeGraph, and it’s already been endorsed by heavy-hitters such as Esri, CARTO, Billups, Skyhook, and Nielsen.
How Marketers Should Prepare for an Abnormal Holiday Season
Marketers overuse the word “unique,” but the adjective actually applies to this year’s holiday season. Consumer-facing brands and retailers have not faced such an adverse economic environment for more than a decade, and they have never grappled with a Q4 in which driving customers to their stores came with daily, life-or-death stakes.
I spoke to Michele Marzan, chief strategy officer at MainAd, about these holidays’ unprecedented challenges and unexpected opportunities.
GroundTruth Uses Location Data to Reach ‘Pick-Up Loyalists’
GroundTruth has mapped more than 2,900 Walmart Online Grocery Pick-Up zones within Walmart parking lots, which means brands using GroundTruth’s technology can now build accurate custom audience segments comprised of these specific shoppers.
Expanding on that concept, brands should be able to send different mobile marketing pitches to consumers who are picking up groceries via Walmart+’s curbside program and consumers who are getting out of their cars and shopping in-store. GroundTruth’s technology turns location data on Walmart+ shoppers into useful consumer insights for brands.
How to Turbocharge Social and Email via Cross Promotion
At a time when marketers have limited resources to create new content, social posts and user-generated content can be a welcome addition to email marketing campaigns and newsletters. Email and social media can also be used to cross-promote, creating two sticky channels that drive home important messages. What’s more, while everyone is at home and online more than usual, marketers can get creative with new forms of social engagement over email, too.
Identifying Content Opportunities from SEO Keyword Trends During Covid-19
Keywords that were optimized to improve inbound sales aren’t doing their job because people are no longer inputting those search terms. Does that mean that your product or service isn’t needed? No, absolutely not. Your brand’s content is needed. But the keyword trends that you had been relying on have changed.
To be able to once again reach your audience, you need to study search trends as they stand now and determine how you can create content around those terms.