Tag: ecommerce

Meredith Corp. Acquires Grocery Server To Tap Into Hyperlocal Market

Posted on by Lab Team

Women’s magazine publisher Meredith Corp. has acquired Grocery Server, a digital ad platform that powers location-based ads for food and retail brands, aiming to make its digital assets more shoppable. The publisher first worked with Grocery Server in April 2014 to plug local ads into its AllRecipes site to let users shop for ingredients with real-time sales info from nearby grocery stores and retailers. After the acquisition, we expect more hyperlocal features like this to start popping up on other Meredith digital properties such as Better Homes and Gardens, Eating Well, and Martha Stewart to incorporate ecommerce into its digital publishing and add value for their readers, while also benefiting the CPG brands and retailers.

Source: AdWeek

Amazon Celebrates 20-Year Anniversary With “Prime Day” Sales Event

Posted on by Lab Team

Read original story on: ZDNet

To celebrate its 20-year anniversary since launch, Amazon is planning a one-day-only sales event dubbed “Prime Day” that aims to encourage both transaction volumes and prime membership sign-ups.

Looking to make it into what Amazon calls “a global shopping event,” the ecommerce giant claims it will be offering “more deals than Black Friday,” exclusively for Prime members in the U.S., U.K., and 7 other global markets. Considering that Prime members on average reportedly spend $1,500 on Amazon a year, more than doubling the $625 non-members spend, it makes perfect sense for Amazon to create ways to lure more customers into Prime membership.

While it may be a first for Amazon, it certainly isn’t the first time an ecommerce site has tried to make a spectacle out of a sales event. In China, Alibaba has been single-handedly spearheading its Annual Sales on Single’s Day – a brand new holiday pushed into public consciousness by Alibaba’s marketing department – into a nationwide online shopping craze. Last year, it even broke the global single-day ecommerce sale record with a smashing $9.3 billion (RMB 57.1 billion) in total transaction volume. If Amazon could score half the success that Alibaba has bad with Single’s Day, Prime Day may very well become a yearly event.

Pinterest Officially Launches “Buyable Pins” To Mobile

Posted on by Lab Team

Read original story on: Marketing Land

Just weeks after announcing its plan to dive into social ecommerce with “Buyable Pins”, Pinterest officially launched the new feature today on iPhones and iPads, allowing iOS users in the U.S. to purchase products directly from the social network. Purchases can be made seamlessly within the Pinterest app using Apple Pay or a credit card. Pinterest says it currently has 30 million buyable pins from a various retailers, including Macy’s, Neiman Marcus, and Nordstrom, as well as e-commerce sites powered by Demandware and Shopify stores.

Twitter Starts Testing New Product Pages And Collections

Posted on by Lab Team

Read original story on: TechCrunch

Following the roll-out of “buy buttons” last fall, Twitter continues to dive deeper into social ecommerce by testing a new feature that allows a “limited group of brand partners” to curate product pages and collections. The new pages will include related tweets and additional information about the products, as well as links to third-party destination sites that will help enable purchasing. Among early adopters, popular consumer electronics review site The Wirecutter stands out with a collection of travel gears. Other notable examples so far include a collection of Game of Thrones-related products, and a page of product recommendations from pop star Demi Lovato.

This new ad feature came right on the heels of Twitter’s announcement of its event-focused “Project Lightning” last week, and an underlying similarity between the two seems clear. Whereas the new “lighting” event page is looking to re-organize and curate disparate tweets to form real-time news coverage, this new “Product Page and Collection” feature aims to leverage editorial curating to create a browse-able shopping experience on Twitter. Whether or not this approach would actually further Twitter’s entry into ecommerce remains to be seen.

Facebook Continues To Expand Its Platforms

Posted on by Lab Team

Read original story on: TechCrunch

Upholding the promise of expanding its platforms made at the Facebook F8 Conference (read event recap here) back in March, the social network has now officially added the first mobile game app on its Messenger platform app list, making “Doodle Draw Game” the first true game available since the platform launched in April. Messenger app has been logging a healthy growth rate, adding 100 million users in the last three months.

Meanwhile, Facebook is also accelerating the rollout of its in-stream “Buy Buttons”. Up until now, Facebook has only been testing the “Buy Button” with a few selected test merchants, but is now opening it up to any retailer on Shopify‘s ecommerce platform. The speed-up came just days after Pinterest unveiled the new “Buyable Pins”, and it almost seems like a reactionary move from Facebook to keep up with the race of social ecommerce.

Still, all things considered, Facebook is doing a great job, arguably the best among all social media platforms, at expanding its platforms with new features, be it in-line video player, Instant Articles, messaging apps, and games, all working to keep users inside its own cyber ecosystem and never need to leave.

Mondelez Seeking More Ecommerce Solutions From Tech Startups

Posted on by Lab Team

Read original story on: AdWeek

Snack giant Mondelez International announced on Wednesday a three-month program named Shopper Futures, which asks participating tech startups to pitch innovative retail solutions involving emerging technology like beacons and conductive ink. The news came on the heels of the debut of Mondelez’s “buy buttons” across its digital platforms, a collaborative effort born out of the company’s partnership with Irish marketing tech firm ChannelSight. Now with the launch of Shopper Futures, it seems like Mondelez is still hungry for more tech-enabled solution to ramp up its sales.

Amazon Turns Boxes Of Its Packages Into Advertising Space

Posted on by Lab Team

Read original story on: TechCrunch

As the undisputable leader in ecommerce, Amazon has always been quite tech-savvy, actively exploring emerging media platforms like connected cars and smart home devices. Ironically, however, the ecommerce giant had been overlooking a low-tech, yet prime ad space right under its nose—the Amazon shipping box.

Perhaps realizing this missed opportunity, Amazon inked a deal with Universal Pictures and Illumination Entertainment to put cute cartoon characters from the Minions movie to help promote its impending release, the first time Amazon has ever allowed a third party to completely brand its iconic delivery boxes.

By accepting advertising on its packages, which litter doorsteps and apartment building lobbies across the states, Amazon may just have found a lucrative new revenue stream. Given that the mostly positive early responses from the customers, it seems reasonable to expect more branded boxes to pop up in the near future.

 

On Trend: Social Commerce Heats Up Again With “Buy Buttons”

Posted on by Lab Team

It all started last summer with Facebook testing “buy buttons” in newsfeed ads, which Twitter quickly followed by rolling out its own “buy now buttons” in September. Neither really gained much traction in the following months, and the race towards social commerce dominance seemed to cool down a bit—until last month. During May, Mondelez International, Google Search, and YouTube all announced their plans to insert their own version of “buy buttons” into their respective digital ad products.

Flash forward to today, both Pinterest and Instagram are making a big push into social ecommerce. Just one day after Amazon “ripped off” its visual layout for its new product curation page Stream, Pinterest has fought right back with “Buyable Pins”. Partnered with Shopify and Stripe, Pinterest will soon let its app users to browse products and make purchases with a few clicks. Not to be outdone, Instagram is also beefing up its ad tools with the addition of “Shop Now” buttons, along with buttons for app installs and sign-ups. Instagram’s API for ad campaign management is also updated to add “interest and demographic targeting” to make it more appealing to marketers and brands alike.

We have long expected social networks like Instagram and Pinterest to enter the commerce market directly, instead of just driving traffic to retailers’ websites. Now that Facebook seems finally ready to scale up the ad offerings on Instagram, as does Google on its search platform and YouTube, brands need to figure out the platform(s) that best suits their needs among an increasing number of viable platforms. Brands should also start developing strategies for social ecommerce in order to translate the convenience of “buy buttons” and the network effect on social platforms into actual sales. And although it’s in its early stages, social commerce will be an important aspect of attribution, finally allowing brands understand how their marketing converts to sales.

Why Amazon Launched A New Pinterest-Inspired Retail Curation

Posted on by Lab Team

Read original story on: The Next Web

Today Amazon launched a curated product page named Amazon Stream which, with a visual repository of daily updated products and a conspicuous “Save” button, took some clear inspiration from Pinterest. Currently, all items featured in Stream are part of the “Amazon’s Sponsored Products” program.

The ecommerce giant has two obvious reasons for experimenting with the new layout. Firstly, Stream offers a new platform to showcase the sponsored products, therefore adding more value to its sponsored ad program. More importantly, Stream transforms the conventional “search-led” online shopping experience into a more “browsing-led” experience that is closer to brick-and-mortar retail experience.

As ecommerce continues to erode physical retail sales, online retailers have also been experimenting with new formats and designs to improve user experience. For more, you can click here to read our POV on “Shoppable Media” to learn how leading ecommerce brands like Amazon are integrating points of sale to create a consistent customer experience across platforms.

 

Head image screen-cap’ed from www.amazon.com/stream

 

How eBay Is Quietly Staging A Comeback

Posted on by Lab Team

Read original article on: WSJ Blog

In recent years, eBay has been lagging behind its competitors like Amazon and Alibaba, which was partly why it decided to spin off PayPal last year. Now just months before the planned split, the former ecommerce leader has quietly started to stage its comeback.

New reports claim that eBay is testing an Amazon Prime-like subscription program in Germany. The program, known as eBay+, promises customers free, expedited shipping and returns for just €15 to €20 (about $17 to $22) per year. For sellers, eBay will be offering discounts on selling fees and a subsidy to help cut the cost of shipping and returns.

Moreover, eBay is also reportedly planning a new ad unit called Promoted Listing that will allow some sellers to elevate their listings above others among the search results. Instead of the usual pay-per-click model, sellers only have to pay when a promoted listing translates into sales.

While it remains to be seen whether this comeback plan will work or not, it is clear that the ecommerce landscape will continues to evolve and expand. Brands operating in ecommerce space need to keep up with the constant changes, as well as the new opportunities they bring.