Shoppability is the New Black
But like many Covid-driven trends, shoppable content has been accelerated by shifting circumstances. And now it’s on a collision course with the holiday season. This means that the companies that are positioned to capture that spend will reap the rewards this year. We’ve seen much jockeying in the ad tech world for this very reason.
Location Weekly: Pinterest Experiments with AR; Zenreach Promotes Walk-Through Metric for O2O Marketing
In this 450th episode of Location Weekly, the cosmetics industry dominates the news. Pinterest is adding an AR make-up testing feature, and L’Oréal is getting personalized with the Perso app.
Atari is blending gaming and hotels, Zenreach is promoting a “walk-through” metric for online-to-offline marketing industry, Havas is partnering with Moving Walls for OOH measurement, and Google is partnering with Coconut Software for financial service reservations feature.
LBMA Presents Location Weekly: Google Buys Pointy; TourByLocal Nabs $25M
We start off with TourByLocal getting $25M to match tourists with 4,000 guides in 162 countries, Albertsons launching Pinterest-Powered In-Store mobile recipes, and Google buying Pointy to boost brick&mortar retail.
After the Worldline interview from NRF, we continue with news from our two member companies: Gimbal giving mobile users control over their location data and Delta reducing travel stress with updated app features.
5 Tips for Growing Affiliate Programs Through Social Channels
According to a recent study by the Performance Marketing Association (PMA), the affiliate marketing channel is expected to grow to over $6 billion by 2020. A Mediakix study found that US influencer marketing spend on Instagram alone is expected to grow $2.3 billion by 2020. The PMA study also indicated that content, bloggers, and social media accounted for 40% of ad spend by affiliate type in 2018, and that number is surely going up. All of these numbers support the idea that influencers and social media bring an incredible monetization opportunity to affiliate marketing.
Let’s look at five ways that brands active in the partner and affiliate channels can benefit from leveraging social media, and ultimately drive more revenue.
Multi-Location Marketers Want to Do More Social Advertising, But One Big Thing Stands in the Way
Unlike search, social is a push medium that marketers can use to reach new audiences. Social can leverage rich ad formats such as mouth-watering images of restaurant dishes, explainer videos for complex products, and eye-catching celebrity or influencer endorsements that are much more impactful and engaging at storytelling than search.
Today’s local enterprise advertisers know that they should be leveraging the one-two punch of search and social together. One day they will. But until social advertising can offer the same streamlined workflow that can make managing hundreds or thousands of locations as easy as search makes it, social will still lag behind in the local marketing media portfolio.
Visual Search Moves Beyond Experimentation and Into Prime Time
After years of experimentation and broad discussions about how visual search would someday take hold, it’s clear that the future has arrived. Visual search has moved into the mainstream, and companies like Pinterest, Instagram, and even Google are paving the way for consumers to engage more deeply with the products they find online.
As visual search moves into the mainstream, questions are intensifying over what impact the medium will have on SEO and traditional search metrics.
Does Influencer Marketing Have a Transparency Problem?
Although the average share of budgets spent on influencer marketing is just 10%, that figure is growing as visual platforms like Instagram, Snapchat, and Pinterest see explosive growth.
The problem? Brands are often focusing on misleading vanity metrics in an attempt to justify those investments. For example, many marketers track follower counts as a primary indicator for determining brand and influencer partnerships. Growing evidence shows that follower counts do not equate to true impressions or reach data, giving brands a false sense of how their campaigns are performing.
Retailers Use Visual Channels to Attract Last-Minute Mother’s Day Shoppers
Spending on Mother’s Day is expected to reach $25 billion this year, with consumers flocking to department stores and florists in search of the perfect gifts for Mom. The bulk of that spending will happen in the next few days, as foot traffic data from the location platform GroundTruth reveals that Americans tend to wait until the very last minute to shop for Mother’s Day gifts.
What are retailers around the country doing to prepare for the onslaught of last-minute shoppers? More than ever before, retailers are leaning on visual marketing opportunities to drive last-minute sales.
May Focus: Visualizing Local
Street Fight is rolling into May with the theme, Visualizing Local: a look at how marketers are using visual content to boost visibility, presence, and conversions. This includes everything from images in search results and local listings to utilizing increasingly popular social media like Instagram Stories.
5 Hot Retail Strategies in Play This Thanksgiving Weekend
Top retailers aren’t leaving anything up to chance. In one of the biggest pushes we’ve seen in years, retailers around the country are embracing interactive technology and social channels in a play to capture a greater share of consumer holiday spending. Read on to learn about five innovative strategies.
Location Weekly: Pinterest Dives into Visual Commerce
In this episode of Location Weekly, the Location-Based Marketing Association hosts Senior IT Manager of Mall of America, Patrick Wand.
The team also covers Incognia launching in US with its location behavior biometrics platform, Liquid Core Gum Co. installing Space Station touch-free gum dispensers, and Pinterest letting its users shop with their cameras.