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JEGI's Tolman Geffs Talks CRM Developments, Ecommerce Trends

Tolman-GeffsAs ecommerce companies continue to encroach on brick-and-mortar stores, investment firm HGGC believes MyWebGrocer, a company that provides digital marketing and analytics services for brick-and-mortar grocers, can help traditional retailers push back against ecommerce giants like Amazon. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but HGGC is rumored to have invested $25 million to $100 million in the Winooski, VT-based tech firm.

Tolman Geffs, co-president of The Jordan, Edmiston Group (JEGI), which helped facilitate the deal, discussed the transaction and CRM’s growing role in marketing with AdExchanger.

Adexchanger: What makes HGGC’s investment in MyWebGrocer important and how is it an example of what you call the “always-on CRM” trend?

TOLMAN GEFFS: This deal points in a direction where a lot more is going to be happening. You’ve got these overfunded point solutions that are competing for specs of revenue when there’s no way they’re going to earn their venture capital back. What’s emerging now is the integrated enterprise marketing stack that integrates software and marketing in a much deeper way.

What the world is moving towards is a marketing model that we’re calling always-on CRM. That’s when a company has a very good idea of who their best audience and customers are. They’re constantly messaging those groups and doing it in a way that allows them to measure the feedback and results in reality instead of testing panels.

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HookLogic's Jonathan Opdyke And Michael Barrett On The Ecommerce Ad Exchange

Jonathan Opdyke and Michael BarrettWith HookLogic’s purview in the ecommerce media arena, one might not think that former Yahoo CRO and AdMeld CEO Michael Barrett would be a logical fit for the company’s board, which was announced last month. But according to HookLogic CEO Jonathan Opdyke, the fit was “natural,” given Opdyke’s own thoughts on the future of exchanges, let alone the imprimatur that Barrett brings.

AdExchanger spoke to Opdyke and Barrett earlier this week about HookLogic, industry trends and the company’s new Retail Search Exchange, which Hooklogic positions as a solution for ecommerce publishers to tap search engine marketing and programmatic budgets. Read more.

AdExchanger: Michael, why connect with HookLogic in particular?

MICHAEL BARRETT:  After the Admeld experience, my short stint at Yahoo helped solidify my thinking. Although SSPs definitely work well for publishers and are their ally, going back to the publisher hammered home some of the macro trends that have occurred in the last five years since the advent of exchanges and programmatic buying.

The CPM story wasn't getting any more attractive for publishers. As a matter of fact, one could argue that it was getting less attractive. Overall in the market, the revenue picture wasn't terribly damaged because you're probably selling more at a higher rate on the lower levels, but it was having a drag on your premium pricing.

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Amazon Positions To Capture CPG Ad Budgets

utzschneider-amazonThe consumer packaged goods (CPG) market presents an opportunity for Amazon to better serve its customers, according to Lisa Utzschneider, VP of Global Advertising Sales at Amazon. Speaking at AdAge’s Digital Conference in New York City today, Utzschneider talked about her company’s approach to targeting ads and the growth of the CPG sector.

In discussing how customers shop online for products, Utzschneider focused on the modern consumer’s shopping experience as part of the “new normal.” “When my family needs something, I just go online,” she said. “Compared to the way my mom shopped — one trip to the grocery each week with nine kids — these are almost two different worlds.”

The CPG market is a $2 trillion business, and 2.3% of all CPG purchases will be made online this year, according to Utzschneider. Amazon’s eCommerce ads, allowing advertisers to embed a coupon with a call to action in a display ad, are a successful way for CPG companies to reach consumers, she added.

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Chinese-Focused Luxury Shopping Recommender Bomoda Turns Inward To US

Brian BuchwaldE-Commerce has entered the mainstream in the U.S. and Europe, but China is where the growth really is. As eMarketer predicted earlier this year, the Asia-Pacific region will surpass North America to become the world's number one market for business-to-consumer e-commerce sales with an annual gain of 30% to over $433 billion.

And that is part of what brought Brian Buchwald, the former head of NBC Universal's local interactive division and one of early executives behind the formation of Hulu, to start an e-newsletter publisher called Bomoda (check out the actual Chinese-language newsletter site here)that's aimed at mainland Chinese women interested in buying luxury goods online.

The year-old New York-based company is launching a US edition to capture Chinese tourists and has raised a little over $2 million last year from a consortium of investors that consisted of venture capitalists in China, as well as MediaMath CEO Joe Zawadzki  and former Yahoo CEO Terry Semel. AdExchanger caught up with Buchwald and asked him about his plans to capitalize on China's economic expansion.

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Shopzilla Formalizes Display Ad Business With Launch Of 'Aisle A' Division

Craig Teich, Aisle AComparison shopping service Shopzilla has unveiled a business unit called Aisle A that will focus on display ad sales and retargeting.

Shopzilla, which has been around since the practical dawn of the consumer internet in 1996, says it now has the capabilities to better leverage purchase intent data aroundwide range of retail products to create a powerhouse advertising and audience targeting business. After all, though Google and Amazon are often valuable partners of Shopzilla, those companies' efforts to tie up display, search and e-commerce suggest that the opportunities are too great to pass up.

"We've been investing in analytics and data heavily," said Craig Teich, Aisle A's VP and GM. "From a data collection standpoint, why build it all from scratch when a lot of that is already in place – and we'll be working with [data management platform] Bluekai on powering our targeting efforts. But beyond that, Aisle A came together as we began to realize more fully the value of the intent data we already possess and how that can be used to develop natural advertising functions across all out properties, as well as those of publisher partners."

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Google Buys Its Shopping Partner, Channel Intelligence

Google-Shopping-WarSince last fall, Google has shown a more aggressive stance in challenging Amazon's dominance in e-commerce, particularly as Facebook has also been making its own significant maneuvers in the space.

Google's $125 million acquisition of Channel Intelligence, one of its four Google Shopping launch partners, is designed in part to develop more in-house capabilities to keep pace with the competition. Read the release. Eventually, Channel Intelligence's tools could have even wider applications for Google's related advertising/e-commerce programs, particularly the paid Product Listing Ads, unveiled last fall.

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Ecommerce Media Plans Lure Ari Paparo To Bazaarvoice

Ari PaparoWith ecommerce retailers infusing their publishing plans with ad placements and sponsored mini-sites, Ari Paparo said yesterday that he’s excited by the possibilities ahead in his new role as SVP of Media Products at Austin, Texas-based social software company, Bazaarvoice (see release).

Paparo has taken the deep dive on the ad tech side previously with real-time ad platform AppNexus, Nielsen and Google’s DoubleClick juggernaut.

He thinks its still early days for the ecommerce and media combo and told AdExchanger, “It's not exclusively limited to ecommerce publishers putting IAB ads on their site. There are opportunities across the board for ecommerce merchants to become closer to their customers and their brands that they represent through the use of data, authentic content from reviews and social, and the use of advertising as a medium to connect those things.”

AdExchanger discussed the new role and industry trends with Paparo.

AdExchanger: What are the responsibilities of the new SVP of Media Products role? How is this different from the challenges you’ve experienced in past roles?

ARI PAPARO: I’ll be defining and executing the media strategy for the company, and working directly with [Bazaarvoice] CEO Stephen Collins. This is interesting for me because several times I’ve had the opportunity to move a market - from the work I did with VAST and video or with rich media and DoubleClick. Ecommerce is similarly ready for substantial changes to the way it does business in the media sphere. Bazaarvoice is uniquely suited to take advantage of that.

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Triad Retail Riding The Ecommerce Media Company Wave

Triad RetailThe concept is simple enough. When you’re shopping online, you’re showing "intent" to purchase.  And so it follows that display media placed on an ecommerce publisher’s site can guide consumers, positively affect conversions and drive awareness for hungry advertisers.

This was the premise for Florida-based Triad Retail Media way back in 2004 when CEO Greg Murtagh founded his company after years in the packaged good industry and as a digital marketer.

Today, Triad Retail counts among its clients Walmart.com (Triad’s first client), eBay and eBay Motors as well as a host of larger ecommerce publishers.  Last week, the company along with its main investor, H.I.G., decided it was time to sell to investment group Rockbridge Capital, owned by Quicken Loans founder Dan Gilbert, who also owns a majority of the Cleveland Cavaliers basketball team.  Read the release. Murtagh says that Rockbridge will help point Triad to a future that brings data and analytics to bear in a retailer media business that is going increasingly programmatic.

Clearly, with content, ads and commerce converging, publisher and marketer roles are becoming increasingly hard to define - and, ad technology companies and agencies stand to benefit.

According to Murtagh, his company saw a 40% growth rate in 2012 with revenue topping out at $171 million (even as a media revenue number, it’s still impressive.).

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E-Commerce Platform FiftyOne: A Bridge Between Payment Services And Merchants

Michael DeSimone, FiftyOneJust before holiday season kickoff last month, MasterCard tapped FiftyOne Global Ecommerce to provide exclusive online shopping offers from major U.S. retailers to the credit card company’s international users. These non-U.S. MasterCard cardholders have been able to find and redeem discounts of up to 30% off on merchandise and complete orders using local currency – without having to figure out currency conversions or face import levies.

FiftyOne has retail affiliations with Aéropostale, Barneys New York, Bloomingdale’s, Gilt Groupe, J.Crew, Macy’s and others. “Fueled by growing emerging economies, broadband penetration and access to information, consumers all over the world have developed a ‘global mindset’ with vast brand recognition and a desire to buy these brands, whenever and wherever,” said Geoff Iddison, Group Executive, Global E-commerce at MasterCard, in a statement.

We spoke with FiftyOne CEO Michael DeSimone about the company’s position in between payment providers and retailers and how data informs those relationships.

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E-Commerce Dollars Are Driven More By 'The How,' Not 'The What'

When it comes to e-commerce, there's Amazon and then there's everybody else. Whether a retailer specializes in flash sales or in subscription-based, curated "boxes of merchandise," all companies in the space are defining themselves against what Amazon has achieved and what it, as general go-to for everything from books to music to household items, can never be.

A panel addressed this issue today at Business Insider's Ignition conference.

Moderator Kevin Ryan, CEO of luxury discount deals site Gilt Groupe (and the co-founder of Business Insider), put the question to his guests: Amazon was the pioneer way back in the early part of the last decade -- why did take until after 2007 for the innovation of flash sales, social shopping and subscription based digital retailing to attract consumers? And how long will it take until these businesses can scale (e.g., reach a revenue threshold of say, $100 million)?

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