Commerce

Whether one defines Amazon as a technology company, a retailer or both, what marketers should really be paying attention to is the company’s growing position as a media company and how they can better play ball with the platform, insiders say. “Who can get a better CPM rate lower in the funnel than Google?” said […]

Alibaba Group’s $206 million stake in US startup ShopRunner this fall foreshadowed the Chinese commerce giant’s interests in cross-country expansion. With a looming IPO expected this year and reports of a possible Nasdaq or NYSE listing, all eyes are on the company’s monetization moves. Often referred to as “the Amazon of China,” Alibaba owns close […]

Although Amazon and eBay are retail marketplace giants, the companies supply data and sell media placements in very different ways. These differences, reflected in their respective digital go-to-market strategies, trace back to each company’s origin. EBay’s roots in auction-based, consumer-to-consumer (C2C) business give marketers and advertisers a much different value proposition than Amazon’s original B2C […]

Ever more companies on the buy side want to partner directly with publishers. Sell-side platforms (SSPs), ad networks, agencies, demand-side platforms (DSPs), retargeting networks and others have over the last year increased their efforts to gain visibility and direct inventory access. In a recent telling example, WPP Group’s Xaxis programmatic platform absorbed 24/7 Media to […]

Some people dread winter. Others revel in it, and it’s to these powderhounds that Liftopia caters. Using Liftopia, skiers (and snowboarders) can reserve significantly discounted lift tickets for specific resorts on specific dates. The company wears many hats. Its prime function is as an ecommerce site, yet because it offers lift tickets to ski resorts […]

Founded in 2004, Cranston, RI-based jewelry brand Alex and Ani scored a spot on Inc. 500’s fastest-growing brands in America list in 2012 and continues to garner a fashion-forward fanbase for its popular charms and bangles. Alex and Ani also has a division, Affinity, that builds corporate partnerships, through which the company sells licensed merchandise […]

The retail industry, unlike verticals where data compliance is a major issue, appear more in the thought-leadership phase of advanced data analysis than actual execution, despite isolated gains by some their progressive counterparts in building their own marketing-tech stacks. Eighty-three percent of retailers profiled in EKN Research’s “Big Data in Retail” study said they are […]

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 […]