In 2012, Target had to swallow a few hard truths. Its digital platform relied solely on third-party code and it had little to no engineering talent in-house. And it was playing catch-up with mobile. “My focus has been on moving toward an agile product model where we rewrote our code [over three years] for about […]
Amazon has an ever-growing deluge of data that it’s putting toward a trio of ad units and new consumer-facing projects. In addition to Sponsored Products, Product Ads and Sponsored Links, which underpin its nearly $1 billon advertising business, Amazon is testing numerous consumer features designed to strengthen its ecommerce data set with search activity. “Amazon […]
EBay rolled out the beta version of Promoted Listings on Tuesday, a self-serve cost-per-sale ad product, to select eBay Stores merchants. Promoted Listings, which will be widely available in June, appear in desktop and mobile searches and are optimized based on past searches or purchase propensities. They loosely mimic Google’s Shopping Ads (formerly known as Product […]
Most people think of Overstock.com solely as a discount ecommerce retailer, which is no surprise considering the company ranks No. 31 in Internet Retailer’s recent list of the nation’s biggest e-tailers. But Overstock also features a range of services beyond ecommerce that aren’t intended to be revenue generators, but are instead designed to turn general […]
Chinese ecommerce giant Alibaba has replaced CEO Jonathan Lu, effective May 10. Announced Thursday during its fiscal fourth-quarter earnings call, the company revealed incumbent COO Daniel Zhang would be promoted to CEO while Lu will continue on as vice chairman of the board of directors. Zhang, an eight-year Alibaba vet and original founding member, has held […]
The recent announcement from Condé Nast that Style.com, once the digital home of Vogue, will be relaunched as a pure ecommerce destination is yet another sign of the blurred lines between publishing and ecommerce. Many editorial outlets seek to tap their valuable readership beyond advertising. Monocle, which has had ecommerce offerings since its 2007 founding […]
Twitter founder Jack Dorsey’s payment startup Square is moving farther up the funnel. Known mainly as a lightweight mobile payment processor for boutique mom-and-pop stores and taxi cabs, Square on Tuesday rolled out Square Marketing, a product that will fit in to its growing set of Customer Engagement tools for small and midsize businesses (SMBs). […]
Women’s clothing retailer Bebe is rewiring the way it turns data into personalized offers for young, fashion-forward females on their devices of choice. Founded in 1998 and now operating more than 200 retail stores with 100 international franchisees, the company hired a chief digital officer, Erik Lautier, in January 2014 to improve conversions on Bebe’s […]
Jet.com, the stealth upstart from Marc Lore, the man who sold vertical ecommerce company Quidsi – parent of Diapers.com, Soap.com and BeautyBar.com – to Amazon for $545 million in 2010, wants to remake the commerce model. Primed to launch in late spring, Jet.com seeks to democratize the Amazon marketplace model. Buyers who subscribe for $49.99 […]
BrandShop is betting that ecommerce and agency services will continue to bleed together. Publicis Groupe’s $3.7 billion SapientNitro buy is the most recent example, but earlier deals such as Accenture Interactive’s acquisition of ecommerce advisory shop Acquity Group also underscore the shift. BrandShop, a hybrid of marketing services, ecommerce technology and orders and fulfillment, draws […]
Mobile marketing platform Vibes thinks all of the fanfare around Apple Pay might bring mobile wallets into the mainstream. Thus, it rolled out a related mobile ad product called WalletAds on Friday in anticipation of that shift. WalletAds lets consumers download branded content, offers or coupons to Apple Passbook or Google Wallet directly from a banner ad. […]
Facebook on Tuesday rolled out product ads designed to let retailers connect their product lists with news feed units. Read the blog post. Retailers traditionally have trouble syncing up inventory-level data with media, since the bulk of that information sits in transactional databases. “With dynamic product ads, marketers can directly upload their product catalog to Facebook or set […]
If data is currency, then eBay’s ecommerce marketplace is a bank. But what of eBay Enterprise, the marketing services division that eBay hopes to spin off? While the eBay marketplace has 155 million active users, generated $2.3 billion in Q4 and fields mobile apps that helped transact $20 billion in sales last year, eBay Enterprise […]
Chinese ecommerce giant Alibaba Group is experiencing growing pains as it introduces mobile ad formats and weans itself from its pay-for-performance model toward one involving algorithmic-based advertising. On the company’s earnings call Thursday, COO Daniel Zhang called pay for performance a “great discovery mechanism,” but said focus on mobile monetization could have a short-term negative […]
Adobe isn’t exactly synonymous with ecommerce. At least, synonymous in the sense of competitors SAP and Oracle, which have invested aggressively and acquired commerce-centric companies like hybris, ATG Commerce and Datalogix, respectively. The extent of Adobe’s commerce capabilities, to date, have spanned standard site analytics, A/B testing and tag management, but the Adobe Marketing Cloud […]
Financially troubled British grocer Tesco confirmed rumors it intends to offload its data marketing and analysis division, dunnhumby. In documents released Thursday, Tesco said it has appointed Goldman Sachs as its adviser to explore “strategic options” for the US$756 million business as it embarks on a complete overhaul of its assets. It’s hard to bucket […]
Black Friday came and went and while the results were mixed (The National Retail Federation (NRF) estimated an 11% drop in combined online and in-store retail sales), digital seems to be the bright spot. ComScore, for instance, found $26.7 billion was spent online in the month of November, a 16% increase from last year while Adobe’s […]
You’ve come a long way, baby. Product listing ads (PLA), which some consider the crown jewel in Google’s commerce crown, didn’t cost a thing in 2012. Today the paid search product, now referred to as Google Shopping Ads, may be bringing in as much as $8 billion for Google, according to Evercore Partners estimates. Based […]
Following on the heels of its buy button announcement and its recent CardSpring acquisition, Twitter announced the introduction of what it’s calling Twitter Offers – another step by the social network to add more commerce functionality to its offering. Twitter bought CardSpring back in July. The platform enables the creation of payment applications, a clear complement […]
E-commerce giant Alibaba – often referred to as the Amazon of China – had a rosy third quarter, its first as a public company after a whopping $25 billion IPO (the one that put about $6 billion in stakeholder Yahoo’s pocket). (Earnings release.) Alibaba’s Q3 revenue growth was “mainly driven by the growth in online […]
Walmart, one of the last bastions of big box retail, is investing for a digital future – one with considerably less square footage. Walmart recently revealed plans to invest between $1.2 to $1.5 billion in its ecommerce and digital operations for fiscal year 2016. Subsequently, its in-store investments are taking a temporary hit. In its […]
At the outset of Advertising Week in New York City, WPP chief Sir Martin Sorrell turned his attention to Amazon’s VP of global ad sales Lisa Utzschneider on the stage they shared with Live Nation, CBSi and ESPN. “Your job, I guess, is to demonstrate the value of Amazon’s data for off-platform advertising,” he quipped. “Your revenues […]
Rakuten Marketing, the online marketing subsidiary of Japanese ecommerce giant Rakuten, renamed its business units on Tuesday to signify its omnichannel aspirations. Rakuten Marketing is part of a hybrid clique of companies scurrying to unite digital marketing and commerce data services – competitors like eBay, IBM and the newly public Alibaba – round out the […]
An emerging theme at the Digital Marketing Exposition & Conference (DMEXCO) in Cologne, Germany – where 30,000 digital marketers are convening – is building for future cross-channel experiences. Amazon is no stranger to the concept. Although the ecommerce giant has, of late, been reportedly developing an ad platform to rival Google’s, the company maintains a […]
As Asia-Pacific commerce powerhouses like Alibaba and Rakuten push West, it’s still unclear how they will grow large US-based audiences. One such method is through acquisition. Alibaba late last week priced its IPO at $60 to $66 per share and expects to raise $24 billion when the company begins trading on the New York Stock […]
Facebook and Twitter are keen to build more commerce functionality into the social stream. Earlier this summer Facebook began working with select commerce brands to support direct transactions on its platform, and Twitter has been expected to produce something similar after sharp-eyed users spotted a semi-functional “buy” button on the site in July. Well, now that other […]
Catalina, a purveyor of consumer purchase insights for CPGs, has acquired digital coupon company and “instant savings” application Cellfire for an undisclosed sum. Cellfire bridges the gap between digital coupons and store loyalty systems, first launching its service with grocer Kroger in 2008; additional roll-outs with Safeway, CouponLink, ShopRite, Giant Eagle and Stop ‘n Save […]
Google and Amazon are going after each other. Google has ramped up commercial search and fulfillment, and Amazon is building a Google-like ecosystem around ads – a project involving an ad-buying platform to rival AdWords, according to The Wall Street Journal. And of course, both are investing heavily in video content and advertising. What is Amazon’s […]
Despite having close to a half million Instagram followers, upscale retailer Nordstrom knows that “likes” and “follows” are great for growing community and measuring engagement or affinity, but these actions don’t necessarily translate into hard business metrics. Retailers want to know if that showroom-grade snapshot on social actually sold a tube of lipstick. “What we’ve primarily […]
Monetate, a platform primarily known for landing page optimization, has expanded well beyond the A/B test. Appointing long-time board member and entrepreneur Lucinda Duncalfe as CEO on Tuesday, the Philadelphia-based company says it’s tackling a “multi-billion dollar” market opportunity: digital personalization. While Monetate’s early product strategy around website targeting and optimization drove early growth for […]
