Commerce

Although Amazon has kept fairly quiet about its ad-services pitch to media buyers, analysts believe that marketing services will be a driving force in what sustains and propels the ecommerce giant in the years to come. “Amazon has to push into new areas,” writes David Farnoush, a media analyst for Harmelin Media, in a blog […]

What could be coined Amazon’s original advertising product, the Amazon Associates affiliate marketing program, connects advertisers to more than a million products in its marketplace. As standard affiliate models go, publishers can run traditional text links or customized image links, widgets with Amazon functionality or banner promotions and ads in return for an advertising fee […]

Google’s product listing ads (PLAs) have positioned it for a strong holiday season, possibly at the expense of Amazon. Based on data compiled in the third quarter, search and digital marketing agency RKG found that among 500 online retail clients, Google search spending increased 18% year over year. In Q3 alone, Google PLAs drove 35% […]

Method of delivery is apparently the new black in retail marketers’ holiday ’13 arsenal. And, it’s on the minds of the commerce masses. This week, after stumbling back from a Q3 earnings call that painted a somewhat stormy picture of its holiday ecommerce expectations (“deceleration” was the word used), eBay made a move to acquire […]

Amazon fielded two inquiries from analysts about advertising services on today’s Q3 earnings call, but CFO Tom Szkutak wasn’t biting. Brian Pitz, managing director at Jefferies & Co., asked Szkutak about domestic ecommerce trends, as well as the growth of Amazon Web Services and Advertising Services. (The company reports the groups together in an “other” […]

In August, Amazon opened its longstanding Amazon Associates Web affiliate program to mobile developers looking to monetize in-app purchases. Using the Amazon Mobile Associates API, game and app developers could earn up to 6% in advertising fees on all Amazon product purchases they helped facilitate. And Amazon Appstore Developer Select launched in early October for […]

Amazon, the ever-silent commerce stalwart, may be next in line to join the Facebook Exchange party, according to AdExchanger sources. Today, Facebook finally granted (long-awaited?) access to Google’s demand-side platform, DoubleClick Bid Manager, to enable DoubleClick advertisers to dish up retargeted ads on the social network through integration to FBX. A number of DSP partners like […]

Emmett Shine’s Bowery-based agency Gin Lane Media is not your everyday 25-person creative shop. The agency had early roots in women’s apparel; its founder and CEO began T-shirt company LOLA New York in 2005 while circumnavigating the downtown New York design and art scene. After securing a number of small projects that landed SeamlessWeb and […]

Alibaba Group, the Chinese equivalent of Amazon, has invested $206 million in ShopRunner, a member-only subscription ecommerce platform connecting consumers to hundreds of retail brands (like Toys R Us and Tommy Hilfiger) and a plethora of perks — like free, two-day shipping and express checkout for $79 a year or $8.95 a month. Alibaba, in […]

Data science is the backbone of numerous ad-tech firms competing in an increasingly technology-driven environment. Explaining what data scientists do is difficult, however, given that their work is often described as a mix of art and science and varies with each company. AdExchanger asked data scientists from Decide.com, a price research firm acquired by eBay, […]

All location-based mobile advertising campaigns are not created equal and, for retailers, the nuances between data sources and surfaced promotions have several layers of intricacy. Mobile advertising continues to pique the interest of retail marketers – and investors. Just today, end-to-end mobile marketing platform Swirl Networks closed an $8 million strategic investment round from Hearst […]

There’s an ever-growing opportunity for advertisers on Amazon, the commerce marketplace maven every retailer hopes to emulate (and simultaneously fears). The company has nearly doubled its global ad revenues since 2011, from $420 million to an expected $835 million this year, eMarketer estimates. If true, this puts it ahead of publishers like Pandora, Twitter, LinkedIn and […]

Breaking: The sizzle reel still has legs. Two thousand attendees at the Association of National Advertisers’ annual Masters of Marketing conference were treated to numerous examples of the genre Friday, as senior marketers from Chrysler, Walmart, MARS and Coca-Cola showed off their favorite TV spots. Repeatedly. But while the raw storytelling power of television remains […]

With Amazon’s August rollout of Collections, the commerce giant appeared to go head-to-head with Pinterest on an offering affording merchants a direct link to products consumers “like, want and recommend.” Now, Japanese ecommerce company Rakuten appears to be working on its own image-centric platform following its $100 million investment in Pinterest last year. Yesterday’s launch […]

Mobile commerce will reach new highs on Black Friday and Cyber Monday this year, and retailers are hastily preparing for the onslaught of traffic those devices will bring. Couple that with the fact that there are 26 days between Thanksgiving and Christmas, compared to last year’s 32, and retail marketers are working on compressed campaign […]

As marketers, ad-buyers and CMOs are increasingly asked to defend their spend, a “consistent data framework” that surpasses the boundaries of channel will be one way to help them win budgetary battles, according to one exec. Josh Herman, VP of partner and product strategy at Acxiom, joined executives from eBay, Datalogix and Nielsen Catalina Solutions […]

Advertising across devices and bridging the gap between online and offline campaigns should be key components of every marketer’s strategy, according to Lisa Utzschneider, Amazon.com’s global VP of sales, who outlined the ecommerce giant’s marketing tactics yesterday at the Dmexco conference. Amazon’s customer strategy is based on three rules: “Start with the customer and work backwards, […]

Consumers don’t mind sharing personal information with retailers, but they have varying preferences when it comes to the manner in which their data is collected, a new study says. In a survey of 2,500 shoppers in the US and Canada that started last spring, IT services and consulting firm Cognizant broke down consumer sentiments on […]

Not to be outdone by the brick and mortars, eBay announced today its acquisition of Seattle-based pricing research and data firm Decide.com for an undisclosed sum. Decide.com applies what it calls “patent-pending machine-learning and text-mining algorithms” to an avalanche of price points to connect consumers to highly rated products and services. Users gained access to competitive pricing […]

Independently owned-and-operated outdoor specialty retailer Rock/Creek  has realized early return as one of Twitter’s early beta advertisers. The brand was founded 25 years ago as a Chattanooga-based canoeing company. It operates five standalone stores in addition to an ecommerce platform, but has yet to mobile-optimize its site. Fifty-one percent of retailers cited this very optimization […]

With mobile commerce forecasted to hit $25 billion by year’s end, according to comScore, digital agencies are naturally fielding more questions about device strategy. Or, in the case of Razorfish, “context strategy.” Jason Goldberg, VP of strategy for multichannel commerce & content at Razorfish and member of the board of directors for Shop.org, touched on […]

Founded six years ago by three former Yahoo engineers, social commerce community portal Polyvore has amassed 80 million product boards or “sets” since inception. To date, the company has raised more than $22 million in funding from Benchmark Capital and others, and now feeds 7.5 billion product impressions per month to brand and retail clients […]

To Qubit, a London-based company founded by four former Googlers, proper optimization of Web technology deployments plays a critical role in the effectiveness of commerce experiences and online advertising. A range of publishers like the BBC and retail brands like Pandora rely on Qubit’s enterprise tag management product Opentag for digital marketing and other forms […]

It all comes down to who owns the digital identity and the addressability that follows. Late this spring when Amazon launched the Login with Amazon service, it gave access to 200 million-plus active Amazon users to app developers and site owners. “Login with Amazon is the latest offering in an array of services that make […]

Following its spring acquisition of recommendations engine Avail, ecommerce personalization and shopping media company RichRelevance has acquired the assets of data analytics startup Precog, for an undisclosed sum. Founded by former Amazon exec David Selinger in 2006, San Francisco-based RichRelevance currently has close to 200 customers including Walmart, Target and Marks & Spencer. Precog CEO […]

The evolution of commerce has made data the new “MVP” of retail marketing. A common theme at this week’s eTail East conference in Philadelphia, a gathering of 1,150 retail minds, was delivering personalized offers at scale. To do so, marketers are looking for ways to harness data across a range of sources ranging from loyalty marketing […]

Retailers that push fewer posts, but better and more targeted ones, are gaining an edge over those that pursue volume when it comes to publishing Facebook content, new data suggests. The 50 Social Retail Report from enterprise social media management company Expion analyzed 16,000 posts for the top 50 retail brands as designated by Interbrand. […]

“Data Driven Thinking” is written by members of the media community and contains fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media. Today’s column is written by Ramsey McGrory, CEO at AddThis. The media industry was left stunned with this week’s news that The Washington Post and its 135-year-old legacy is now under the watchful eye […]

In a surprise Monday afternoon announcement, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has struck a deal with the Washington Post Company to buy its namesake newspaper for $250 million. Read the release. The purchase comes just a few days after WaPo’s Q2 earnings demonstrated some slight income and revenue gains, though, as usual, that was due to […]

Walls between channel-specific and traditional retail marketing roles are beginning to crumble, according to new data outlined in Forrester Research’s “Commerce Technology And Platform Investment Trends – 2013” report. With online retail spend in the US forecasted to grow 9.9% between 2012 and 2017 and digital channels (online, mobile and tablet) estimated to account for 10% […]