Facebook wants to be the answer to your cross-device measurement problem and it’s in a pretty good position to do it. Enter cross-device reporting for ads, courtesy of Facebook. The new measurement solution, unleashed Wednesday, is available within Facebook’s campaign back end and is designed to allow advertisers to track customers as they move across […]
Comparison shopping site Shopzilla has a lot of data. About 20 years’ worth, to be exact. Shopzilla’s been around since 1996 and unbeknownst to some, still drives 50 million monthly unique visitors across its owned-and-operated network that includes consumer insights and merchant ratings site Bizrate. But the company will soon become primarily a marketing services […]
What’s the hottest new digital toy? If you’re Facebook and Twitter, it’s the buy button. To recap: Facebook published a blog post explaining its experimentation with a buy button – currently with select small and medium-sized businesses – with which users can purchase goods directly through the Facebook platform. This announcement followed Twitter’s own dalliance with […]
Ecommerce giant Amazon on Thursday reported Q2 revenue of $19.3 billion, up 24% from $15.7 billion last year. Amazon buckets ad revenues in an “other” category ($1.2 billion for Q2, a YoY 38% increase from $844 million), which includes Amazon Web Services (AWS) and branded credit cards. One of the biggest focuses for Amazon in […]
Complex attribution remains a work in progress for retailers, and most still rely on last-click attribution models, according to Forrester Research and Shop.org’s State of Retailing Online 2014 study. The survey found “attribution modeling is very early and very imprecise,” said Sucharita Mulpuru, Forrester analyst and author of the report. Part of the problem is […]
Walmart’s widely revered as a retail maven, but media buyer? It’s a brand-new capability for the $473-billion company, which on Friday revealed more details about the digital marketing platform it’s developed, the Walmart Exchange (WMX). Like Amazon, which has turned massive amounts of shopper data into monetization opportunities for brands via Amazon Media Group’s demand-side […]
Retailigence, a mobile location company that connects brand advertisers with brick-and-mortar pricing and product availability down to the SKU, has turned an eye toward ad tech vendors. Rolling out on Wednesday an adPop Engine for channel partners, of which Medialets, AdColony, PointRoll, Tremor Video and Xtopoly are early users, the company, which bills itself as […]
Ecommerce startups have turned toward television advertising, signaling shifting interest from reaching a niche group of consumers to mass audiences. Some, such as subscription ecommerce startup Birchbox, are investing money in the medium for the first time. Birchbox debuted its “Open For Beautiful” television campaign Monday, which will be supplemented with shoppable online video and print […]
Big box retailer Walmart’s software and technology accelerator @WalmartLabs has acquired Adchemy, the developer of a SaaS platform that essentially makes retail product search smarter. Silicon Valley-based @WalmartLabs, which employs 2,100 people, was founded three years ago as a way to develop and scale technology to tap into online buying patterns of the store’s 245 […]
Walmart.com VP of Marketing Brian Monahan provided a glimpse into the retail giant’s strategy for bridging online and offline commerce Tuesday at Ad Age’s Digital Conference. More than 240 million people in the United States visit Walmart’s stores, clubs, sites and apps on a weekly basis, Monahan said. And as consumers increasingly move across digital […]
Despite the recent headlines generated around Newegg.com’s battles with patent trolls, the company is best known as an ecommerce retailer of computer hardware and software. The company is privately held, and has an estimated revenue of $2.8 billion. A large part of Newegg’s growth has to do with its continuous customer acquisition. At Adobe Summit 2014 the […]
With Tuesday’s announcement that SAP will resell Adobe Marketing Cloud, packaged with the analytics platform HANA and the ecommerce solution hybris, it’s fair to wonder what SAP’s role in digital marketing will be going forward. Will it, for instance, ever develop its own marketing cloud to compete with Oracle, Salesforce.com or IBM? Brian Walker, chief […]
MyBuys, a provider of personalized recommendations solutions for retailers, has rolled out a display ad offering called MyAds and rewired its product suite. CEO Bob Cell said the changes let marketers more easily measure across the full consumer journey. And just as larger vendors like Adobe have moved toward “customer profile” pricing schemas, so too […]
Many know Expedia.com for its bevy of hotel-booking businesses such as Hotwire and Hotels.com, but its burgeoning media services division is a lesser-known Internet name. Expedia Media Solutions provides access to an active audience of 70 million monthly users. The business connects advertisers to in-market travelers across a wide range of supply sources and partners […]
Are brick-and-mortar retail chains setting their sights on demand-side platforms (DSPs)? The rumor that Tesco’s customer insights subsidiary, Dunnhumby, will acquire Sociomantic, a DSP provider, adds fuel to the possibility. And whether or not the rumored acquisition is true, industry experts expect to see more retailers working with DSPs. If the deal occurs, Dunnhumby will […]
Marketing automation platform Silverpop’s recent push into revenue analytics for B2B marketers culminated Tuesday in the launch of Marketing Automation for Ecommerce. The product addresses a multitude of B2C needs, at the core of which is the ability to tie email to revenue. The problem with attributing email to purchase activity is that a customer […]
Shopzilla, the comparison shopping site started in 1996 during the beginning stages of the ecommerce explosion, acquired on Wednesday programmatic media-buying platform Connexity to ramp up its audience-buying efforts. Shopzilla will integrate Connexity into its audience-activation division, Aisle A, formed one year ago to facilitate display ad sales and retargeting on Shopzilla.com as well as […]
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 […]
A denim-clad Jack Dorsey took the stage Wednesday morning at the National Retail Federation’s Big Show in New York, claiming to be a man of “very few words and even fewer characters.” “We hear [the word ‘technology’] so much it tends to lose its meaning,” the chairman of microblogging mainstay Twitter and CEO of payments […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Ecommerce spending in the US grew 13% year-over-year in the third quarter to $47.5 billion, a softening from Q2 when the growth rate hit 15%, according to comScore’s State of the US Online Retail Economy report. “There was a bit of a dip in consumer sentiment,” commented Andrew Lipsman, VP of industry analysis at comScore. […]
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 […]
Refinery29 has raised $20 million in Series C funding from Stripes Group to expand its category coverage and technological clout. The round brings its financing total to $30.4 million. What began as a grassroots fashion discovery portal for emerging brands and designers in New York, the city where high school friends Philippe von Borries 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 […]
Retail brands, and the vendors that serve them, continue to obsess about how to bridge the gap between online intent and offline sales. Retailigence, the developer of a “hyperlocal marketing platform” for brands and retailers, has rolled out a solution that allows consumers to reserve products online and pick up in-store. Although the concept is […]
