Earnings Season Teases Retail’s Next Normal
Earnings results that rolled out from retail giants over the past week further demonstrate what our next normal will look like. Specifically, Walmart and Target both hit record numbers. This is partly a function of Covid-era circumstances, but it is also due to each retailer’s active e-commerce momentum.
The earnings validate consumer acclimation to digitally infused local shopping. What’s more, other retailers and down-market businesses will look to replicate this success. This can all therefore be viewed as a leading indicator for retail’s next normal.
Political Advertisers’ Impact on Brands
A recent report from eMarketer found that political ad spend will reach $6.89 billion in the 2019/2020 election period. This cycle’s spending is 63.3% higher than spend in the 2015/2016 season, showcasing a significant uptick in competition for brand marketers. That said, political advertisers are becoming savvier, expanding their breadth and scale into additional channels and further encroaching on brands’ digital bread and butter.
Here are a few ways political ad spend will impact brand marketers’ approach and how they can adjust their strategies so they don’t lose momentum in the coming months.
More Americans Are Using Delivery. The Change Is Here to Stay
Delivery has perhaps been the industry most clearly affected by the Covid-19 pandemic. When physically going to brick-and-mortar stores became a life-or-death exercise, delivery, which had already grown under the rise of e-commerce, became an even more essential part of how local commerce functions.
Khaled Naim, co-founder and CEO of delivery software company Onfleet, touched on how delivery has changed in the past months, how long those changes will persist, and what technologies are fueling the widespread increase in deliveries.
Covid-19 and Retail Survival: The Online-Offline Imperative
Covid-19 has upended the way consumers buy products. But the pandemic is hardly the only factor accelerating the shift from in-person to online purchasing. This trend has, in fact, intensified over the last decade. With more than 9,000 store closures last year in a strong economy, physical retailers for some time have been trying to figure out how they can thrive (and in some cases survive) in an increasingly digital marketplace.
It’s therefore imperative that retailers (of all sizes) embrace a hybrid business model, where online and offline assets are more integrated. Covid-19 has only made this more apparent.
Consumer Concerns Shift from Covid-19 to Economic Uncertainty
Local businesses have been forced out of their comfort zone this summer as the economic impact of Covid-19 lingers and uncertainty persists into the final weeks of summer. With so many questions unanswered, businesses are searching for resources to help guide their decisions in marketing and general operations.
A number of martech firms are looking to fill the information void by launching their own Covid-19 resource centers and consumer data projects. The location-powered advertising and analytics firm Blis launched its own consumer sentiment tracker, with data from consumers in the United States, United Kingdom, United Arab Emirates, Singapore, and Australia.
Foursquare Uses Location Data to Increase Shopper Safety During Covid-19
Social distancing has become a new way of life, but in crowded metro areas, it’s not always possible to remain socially distant inside busy places like supermarkets and pharmacies. Shopping during off-peak periods is the best way to avoid crowds, but during the daytime hours, it’s anyone’s guess whether a particular store will be crowded or empty.
Foursquare thinks it has a solution.
Google My Business Search and Engagement Trends Define the Next Normal
With the addition of call data from DialogTech, we’ve been able to add an important new layer of insight to our examination of consumer sentiment in 2020.
The current report also adds two full months of new Google My Business data to our ongoing study. As you’ll see, the picture painted by the new data is one where consumers are continuing to limit their shopping activities in comparison with pre-pandemic trends, but have increased store visits and contacts significantly throughout the summer, likely with a focus on an expanded set of essential needs mixed with optimism about a return to normal.
How Brands Meet Evolving Customer Expectations with Creative Automation
What customers want from brands is transparency, product information, and available services. Tell audiences about new curbside pickup or what you’re doing to make deliveries safer. Think of how you are removing friction and easing customers’ worry and then speak about it, because not only are they listening, but they’re also paying attention to those who haven’t gotten it right.
Aside from finding the right story angle for customers, many marketing and in-house creative teams are struggling to produce enough new assets and push them quickly out the door, especially as they adjust to remote work. Here are some of the most common challenges brand-side creative teams face during these times and how creative automation can help overcome them.
Location Weekly: DoorDash Opening DashMart Stores
In this episode of Location Weekly, the Location-Based Marketing Association covers Verizon deploying 2cm precision location tracking, DoorDash opening DashMart stores, and Google launching earthquake detection on Android devices. Rich Ventura of Sony Electronics joins as a guest.
Snapchat’s “Promote Local Place”: The Deeper Dive
Snapchat’s 200 million users can now use Snap Map to find businesses in addition to finding friends. These two activities can go hand in hand if friends are discovered nearby on the map when users are planning local adventures.
But what matters most for local is that Snap will now let businesses promote themselves in the map interface, adding a key option for local advertising. This will happen on a self-serve basis for both SMBs and multi-location brands.
How to Start Selling on Amazon in 4 Steps: Complete Guide for Beginners
As the coronavirus pandemic keeps shoppers away from brick-and-mortar stores, those same customers are looking for shopping alternatives online. That, combined with the general increase in e-commerce popularity, makes this an opportune time to expand your online retail presence — including opening up shop on the Moby Dick of all e-commerce marketplaces, Amazon.
6 E-Commerce Tools for Brick-and-Mortar SMBs
Brick-and-mortar merchants are moving their stores online or developing combination solutions that encompass both website sales and curbside pickup to keep pace with customer demand. Many of those businesses that haven’t made the switch are weighing their options and looking for the right technology. Plug-and-play e-commerce platforms tend to be the most popular route for merchants looking to quickly pivot to online sales, but features like scalability, flexibility, and integration with inventory management software are also important to SMBs.
Here are six e-commerce solutions that brick-and-mortar merchants will want to check out.
Third-Party Data May Help Brands Fill Gaps Opened by Covid
The Covid-19 pandemic altered fundamental daily behaviors in most consumers’ lives almost overnight. For some, it had even more drastic effects for better and worse, shifting jobs and spending habits as well as where people go and how they spend their time.
For businesses, the drastic changes of 2020 mean existing data may be unreliable. Ruby Brenden, head of data products at data management platform Lotame, described the stakes of the current situation to Street Fight and gestured toward opportunities to meet the moment.
Fulfilling The Potential: How to Execute A Dynamic Creative Optimization Strategy
Dynamic creative optimization, or DCO, is a hot topic for many digital advertisers. The opportunity to personalize your creative’s look and message for different segments is appealing. However, it is easy to forget that DCO is a tool, not a strategy.
To fulfill the potential of DCO, you need a DCO strategy that pulls three levers at the same time.
A More Granular Look at What Kinds of Data Consumers Are Happy to Disclose
Despite all the understandably scary headlines about the risks of data collection, plenty of consumers are still willing to provide personal information to brands. The catch? They need something in return, and the type of advertising as well as the type of data on which it’s based are crucial to securing consumer trust.
Emerging Trends Shaping the Future of Parking
The fluctuating need for car parking spaces is a source of frustration and concern for city officials all over the world. In the US alone, there are said to be between 105 million and two billion spaces – which is potentially more than the number of cars in existence across the globe. While during busy periods, such as the holiday season, these extensive parking lots are likely to be filled, most of the time they sit empty and unused.
This is wasteful when growing urban areas are constantly in need of more space for housing, schools, and business development. But an array of technologies and technical processes such as automation, the Internet of Things, and self-driving vehicles promise the potential transformation of parking lots and, with them, cityscapes themselves.
App Data, Privacy, and the IDFA Armageddon: Industry Leaders’ Takes
As an industry, we must embrace the new rules of iOS14 and create a sustainable future for both app developers and advertisers. I believe we can all agree that user consent is important for any app that monetizes through advertising. Also, there are options to provide user-level attribution and necessary data for performance advertising within Apple’s acceptable framework. I’d encourage all publishers to talk to Apple and seek clarification on process and end-user consent along with the use of IDFVs & SKAdNetwork product road map, etc.
I expect that publishers will aggressively move to optimize their sign-up funnels to maximize consent or live with campaign-only-level metrics and lose end-user targeting. If you’d like to continue to optimize towards ROAS, we encourage you to think of privacy consent as a step in the UA conversion funnel necessary to show targeted ads to consumers.
Waze Rolls Out Contactless Payments at the Pump
More than half of Americans say they’re concerned about touching cash during the Covid pandemic, and 60% say they plan to use so-called touchless payments in the future. Google’s Waze is leaning into the shift with a new integration and partnership that will enable contactless payments at the gas pump for drivers all across the country.
Location Weekly: Neustar Launches Post-Cookie Measurement with Fabrick
In this episode of Location Weekly, the Location-Based Marketing Association covers Neustar launching post-cookie measurement with Fabrick, Apple acquiring Mobeewave, United Airlines using a chatbot to ease Covid-19 concerns, and Amazon and Simon Properties endeavoring to transform shopping malls.
How Covid-19 Is Speeding Up OOH Advertising’s Digital Transformation
Some OOH media providers have already moved beyond the traditional real estate-based approach in which advertisers focus on a specific region or even choose specific billboard locations. Instead, they are using data and technology to target specific audiences and measure the impact of their campaigns. For the laggards, the pandemic is proving a catalyst for overdue change. Let’s consider why OOH’s audience-based future is closer than ever as well as what is next for the industry’s evolution.