COMMENTARY

Mobile Commerce To Hit New Highs This Holiday Season

• by Karlene Lukovitz  @KLmarketdaily, 5 hours ago

U.S. mobile commerce, or mcommerce, sales are expected to reach $314 billion this year, and represent 44% of projected total ecommerce sales of about $710 billion, according to eMarketer projections.

That partly reflects overall ecommerce growth expected for the year.

While pandemic-necessitated social distancing, unemployment and financial stress will take a toll on bricks-and-mortar spending growth — projected to decline 14% this year (to $4.2 trillion) — overall ecommerce sales are benefitting, with projected growth of 18% (to $709.8 billion), versus 14.9% in 2019.

Looking at the holidays, emarketer is projecting that retail mcommerce sales will reach $71.3 billion this holiday season — up nearly 12% from $59.6 billion in 2019.

That will mean that retail mcommerce holiday sales will represent 23% of overall 2020 mcommerce sales.

In 2018, the researcher estimated holiday retail mcommerce sales at $49.3 billion, accounting for 40% of estimated total holiday ecommerce sales of $123.4 billion. Mobile retail holiday sales totaled $30.6 billion in 2016, and $40 billion in 2017, representing about 33% and 39% of total retail ecommerce holiday sales, respectively.

A recent survey by online installment payments company Sezzle found nearly 80% of shoppers reporting that they were shopping more on mobile since COVID hit — including 53% reporting doing “much more” mobile shopping, noted Forbes contributor Shelley E. Kohan.

“With this new normal of retail, ecommerce and online purchasing options are going to skyrocket, especially on mobile devices, as shoppers prioritize their safety and health,” summed up Sezzle CRO Veronica Katz.

 

COMMENTARY

Virtual Working is Here Stop Worrying, Start Adapting

• by Ashley Cooksley , Op-Ed Contributor, September 18, 2020

Here we are, nearing the end of the third quarter of a business year like no other, and the COVID-19-related headlines for the most part still aren’t great. If you haven’t already figured it out, it’s time to accept that when it comes to working from home, it’s here to stay until a vaccine is widely available. 

For a significant number of companies, working remotely has been a core part of  their company culture, even pre-COVID.

Today, other companies are recognizing not only the tremendous savings working remotely offers, but that they’re seeing the same level of productivity from their staff regardless of where they work.

Perhaps more striking, there’s been a renewed conversation about the 4-day work week in the U.K. and the U.S., something most would have never thought possible just six months ago.

So we all agree that remote work is going to be with us for the foreseeable future. Now what? Here are the four factors that will influence the future of flexible working. 

Trust: Many senior management teams are grappling with having to trust teams working from home. I mean, if you can’t see someone, how do you know they’re working? 

Of course, any employer can tell you that time in the office doesn’t equal productivity. Managers need to rethink what they value, and how they measure it. Forget about seeing them personally. Think about seeing the results of the work they do. That takes good management, and the ability to trust your people. If you can’t trust them, you should question whether they’re the right people, or if you’re measuring for the right things. 

Corporate culture redux: We may be going in and out of lockdowns, either nationally or locally, so it’s crucial for companies to continue to focus on their culture. These times call for a bit of creativity: Think about staggering working times, reducing the number of people needed in meetings, increasing use of virtual tools to connect, collaborate, and create. 

For instance, we encourage a “no meeting Friday” to give team members a breather to catch up or simply take some personal time. We also mark our meetings as “optional” wherever possible. 

Deepen your talent pool: One of the benefits of a virtual structure is the ability to expand the talent pool. You’re not restricted to a single location, and there’s no bias toward those who live in bigger, more expensive cities. There’s a world of brilliant talent out there you wouldn’t be able to tap into if showing up at the office was requisite. 

While the pandemic won’t mean the end of the office, it will lead to a major shift in how employees, managers and business leaders structure and manage their workforce. That will include greater flexibility, and the consequences could be hugely positive in ways measured beyond financial.

 

COMMENTARY

Brands Respond With Optimism As Millennials Face More Challenges

• by Neeti Newaskar , September 22, 2020

Millennials have been over-analyzed and unfairly chastised for most of their adult lives. Yet the truth is they have been dealt a bad hand in more ways than one. Unfortunately, the pandemic is bringing a whole host of new challenges to this already disadvantaged generation, including issues with working from home, playing double duty as working parents, and a general higher level of mental distress than other cohorts, according to researchers at the University of North Carolina and Harvard Medical School. 

Below are a few attitudinal and lifestyle shifts set in motion by these growing pandemic pressures, and some clever brand responses to them.

The great reshuffling.  This describes the exodus from high-priced, heavily populated urban centers to towns and suburbs as millennials look to right-size their living spaces, get closer to family, or just feed their long-standing desire for home ownership.

As the concept of home is being radically redefined, a huge swath of Americans are soon going to be collectively embarking on a new life stage, and brands can tap into the excitement and optimism of new beginnings. For example, Zillow’s latest commercial says the brand will be of value during a time of much change.

Bubbles, pods, quaranteams. These are all terms used to describe a recent trend where two to three families agree to socialize restriction-free with each other, while continuing to maintain strict social distancing rules with others.

As we witness a shift in the concept of extended family, brands are looking beyond the traditional family plan to offer value as such. For example, UK travel company G Adventures has introduced Book Your Bubble tours, where guests are encouraged to book private group trips of 8 to unlock their family promotion.

Reimagining the staycation.  Staycationing is not a new concept. But as an audience that spent the last decade putting the experience economy into overdrive, millennials are taking advantage of a much-expanded definition of staycations: seeking out ways to stay entertained in and around their homebase. Brands are recognizing and responding to this audience’s pent-up desire for adventure in clever and inventive ways.

For example:

Explore the great outdoors: The Yeti+ platform features footage of pure, unadulterated streams across North America for its nature-loving fans. And Audi Australia created a four-hour road trip simulation that takes isolated Aussies across New South Wales.

Guided virtual tastings: Tech-forward wineries are offering tasting packs that can be shipped to homes or picked up curbside, coupled with virtual group tasting sessions.
 
Wanderlust from home: IKEA UAE released a series of décor collections, dubbed Vacations in a Box. The four travel destination-themed boxes contain a selection of items to transform the home into a mini-escape.

The economic and mental health consequences of the pandemic have hit millennials especially hard -- their families, finances, and future plans. Yet to date, they’ve shown impressive resilience and resolve to rebuild. Much like the examples mentioned above, brands can begin to lighten the load by offering optimism, value, and a spirit of inventiveness in light of uncertainty.

 

COMMENTARY

Brands Respond With Optimism As Millennials Face More Challenges

• by Neeti Newaskar , Yesterday

Millennials have been over-analyzed and unfairly chastised for most of their adult lives. Yet the truth is they have been dealt a bad hand in more ways than one. Unfortunately, the pandemic is bringing a whole host of new challenges to this already disadvantaged generation, including issues with working from home, playing double duty as working parents, and a general higher level of mental distress than other cohorts, according to researchers at the University of North Carolina and Harvard Medical School. 

Below are a few attitudinal and lifestyle shifts set in motion by these growing pandemic pressures, and some clever brand responses to them.

The great reshuffling.  This describes the exodus from high-priced, heavily populated urban centers to towns and suburbs as millennials look to right-size their living spaces, get closer to family, or just feed their long-standing desire for home ownership.

As the concept of home is being radically redefined, a huge swath of Americans are soon going to be collectively embarking on a new life stage, and brands can tap into the excitement and optimism of new beginnings. For example, Zillow’s latest commercial says the brand will be of value during a time of much change.

Bubbles, pods, quaranteams. These are all terms used to describe a recent trend where two to three families agree to socialize restriction-free with each other, while continuing to maintain strict social distancing rules with others.

As we witness a shift in the concept of extended family, brands are looking beyond the traditional family plan to offer value as such. For example, UK travel company G Adventures has introduced Book Your Bubble tours, where guests are encouraged to book private group trips of 8 to unlock their family promotion.

Reimagining the staycation.  Staycationing is not a new concept. But as an audience that spent the last decade putting the experience economy into overdrive, millennials are taking advantage of a much-expanded definition of staycations: seeking out ways to stay entertained in and around their homebase. Brands are recognizing and responding to this audience’s pent-up desire for adventure in clever and inventive ways.

For example:

Explore the great outdoors: The Yeti+ platform features footage of pure, unadulterated streams across North America for its nature-loving fans. And Audi Australia created a four-hour road trip simulation that takes isolated Aussies across New South Wales.

Guided virtual tastings: Tech-forward wineries are offering tasting packs that can be shipped to homes or picked up curbside, coupled with virtual group tasting sessions.
 
Wanderlust from home: IKEA UAE released a series of décor collections, dubbed Vacations in a Box. The four travel destination-themed boxes contain a selection of items to transform the home into a mini-escape.

The economic and mental health consequences of the pandemic have hit millennials especially hard -- their families, finances, and future plans. Yet to date, they’ve shown impressive resilience and resolve to rebuild. Much like the examples mentioned above, brands can begin to lighten the load by offering optimism, value, and a spirit of inventiveness in light of uncertainty.

 

Ad Effectiveness: TV Plus Digital Significantly Outperforms Digital Only

• by Karlene Lukovitz  @KLmarketdaily, 6 hours ago

Adding television to digital media improves overall ad campaign performance compared to digital-only — including significantly higher time-spent with ads, brand recall and purchase intent. 

That’s the main takeaway from a just-released, panel-based study from Comcast Cable’s sales division, Effectv, and MediaScience. 

For the study, conducted last September, Effectv and MediaScience assembled a panel of 147 U.S. adults, with their gender ratio reflecting the U.S. population. Participants were all subscribers to TV through cable, satellite or telco, and users of Facebook, YouTube or both. 

Participants were shown ads on YouTube only, Facebook only, YouTube and TV, and Facebook and TV. The ads shown were for a mix of known and unknown (fictitious) brands in the automotive, retail and home improvement categories. The digital ads were viewed on mobile. The television experience was designed to simulate linear TV viewing, with ads shown within top-rated cable programming. 

Participants’ responses were measured with biometrics, facial coding, eye tracking and survey questions.

3X Greater Time-Spent, 2X Brand Recall 

When exposed to ads on both TV and digital, versus digital only, viewers spent three times more time with ads, and their brand recall more than doubled. TV-plus-digital drove also drove a 15% lift in purchase intent, according to the study report. 

In addition, TV produced a “halo effect,” causing digital ads and their brands to be perceived as more appealing than when they were viewed without accompanying TV ads. 

When a digital ad was preceded by a TV ad, perceptions of brand attitude saw a 12% lift. Digital ads were also perceived to be less intrusive, annoying and boring after TV exposure. 

While TV was shown to improve consumer response to all brands, the lifts in key metrics were more pronounced for  unknown brands than known or established ones. 

Participants said that seeing a brand on TV, even if unknown, “legitimized” the company for them, whereas they expressed skepticism about unknown brands they saw only on digital channels.

The significant improvement in ad effectiveness and brand performance seen when TV and digital were paired is in part a factor of lower attention to ads in digital environments, according to the researchers. 

In the study, 94% of viewers watched the TV ads, compared to 78% in the digital environment. TV ads were watched 2.7 times more than digital ads. 

“As consumers’ attention is divided between various screens and experiences, advertisers have more options for where to allocate budget,” John Brauer, executive director of data, insights and innovation, Effectv, tells Digital News Daily. “Many advertisers have shifted more attention to targeted digital video campaigns that focus on short-term sales activation outcomes. Our hypothesis was that this strategy alone is not effective without the contribution of traditional TV advertising designed to build brand strength across the whole category.” 

The results show that consumers’ trust in TV as an information source makes it “an essential piece of the puzzle, building brand trust, dramatically improving results, complementing digital channels, and making advertising dollars work harder,” he sums up. 

The full report is available on Effectiv’s site.

More on methodology: The study was designed to determine statistically significant differences in exposure to a range of brands on digital only and digital with a linear TV exposure. 

All participants saw TV, YouTube and Facebook, with the order of Facebook and YouTube rotating. Test ads rotated across the three platforms, so that some brands were seen once on a single platform, and others were seen twice/on two platforms. 

Viewers were always exposed to all eight brands on digital (four in YouTube and four in Facebook). However, four of the eight brands were also shown on TV. This allowed researchers to isolate the impact of the brand equity TV spot in combination with the digital spot, versus the digital spot alone. In addition, digital effects were separated out for a short-form video (YouTube) environment versus a social media (Facebook) environment. 

 

Report: Auto Ad Spend Set To Accelerate In 2021

• by Larissa Faw , 7 hours ago

Automotive advertising is projected to shrink 21% in 2020 across 10 major markets around the globe, compared to 9% for the ad market as a whole, according to new research from Publicis Groupe media agency Zenith. 

However, spending in the category is poised to outperform the market in both 2021 and 2022, with 10.5% growth in 2021 and 11.4% growth in 2022. Plus, the worst hit markets will benefit from the biggest recovery next year. U.S. ad spend, in particular, is down 21.9% for 2020 but is forecast to recover to 11.6% in 2021 and 17.3% in 2022.  

Digital advertising is the only channel forecasted to grow between 2019 and 2022 with Zenith predicting digital will be the only channel in which auto brands spend more in 2022 than in 2019.  

Digital advertising is the most important single channel for auto brands, but auto advertising is less digital than the market as a whole: auto brands spent 42% of their budgets in digital channels in 2019, while the average brand spent 49%. 

Australia and Canada are the most advanced markets for automotive digital advertising, each devoting more than 70% of total spend to digital channels.  

Zenith believes digital will rise as companies make better use of their customer data to target digital ads more effectively. 

Television is the second-biggest channel for auto advertisers, which spend substantially more of their budgets in television (32%) than the average brand (27%). 

Television is still a key platform for their mass-audience brand-building, though Zenith expects brands to focus more on premium digital video to compensate for declining prime-time TV ratings. Auto ad spend on TV is likely to drop 6% between 2019 and 2022.  

Out-of-home and cinema are forecast to recover strongly in 2021 and 2022 from steep losses in 2020, which were caused by social distancing restrictions. Still, OOH auto ad spend is likely to decline by a net 10% between 2019 and 2022, while cinema ad spend is expected to decline by 16%. 

Radio, a particularly relevant medium given that a large proportion of radio listening takes place in the car, will remain an important media channel, declining only 7% between 2019 and 2022. 

Auto brands spend substantially more on newspaper advertising (11%) than the average brand (7%). That’s primarily due to two markets, Germany and India, where newspapers still have high reach among what Zenith describes as well-educated, wealthy readers. Nonetheless, newspaper ad spend globally will be 27% lower in 2022 than in 2019, and magazine ad spend will be 28% lower. 

“The coronavirus recession has been particularly tough for auto brands, making it especially important for them to adapt to consumers’ changing behaviors and needs,” said Jonathan Barnard, Head of Forecasting, Zenith. “Brands that have got closer to their customers online, by investing in first-party data and personalized communication will be well-positioned to benefit from resurgent demand during the upturn.” 

Zenith’s Automotive Advertising Expenditure Forecasts tracks Australia, Canada, Germany, India, Italy, Russia, Spain, Switzerland, the UK and US, which collectively account for 57% of all global ad spend.

COMMENTARY: The Subtle Sound Of Your Brand In Voice-Activated Worldby

 

COMMENTARY

The Subtle Sound Of Your Brand In Voice-Activated World

• by Cory Treffiletti , Featured Contributor, 3 hours ago

In the COVID age, we focus deeply on what we can see, but how often do we acknowledge what we hear?  How often do we think about how sounds augment our memory and aMusic plays a role in your mood and a brand needs to portray a mood to create a connection with customers.  ssociation with what we see?  

I was having a conversation with audio brand management expert Uli Reese, whom I must credit for conjuring this idea in my head.  He was talking about the concept of sonic branding, which includes music selection in ads, sound piped into a retail environment, hold music for call centers, and more.  Sonic branding is an idea that applies now more than ever as we dive into a voice-activated, digitally connected, COVID-centric world.

While video calls are the norm, you cannot overlook the sound of your brand.  Half a video experience depends on what you hear, not just what you see.

Think about when you used to go get a massage (something we could all probably use these days). You would anticipate a room with the soft, subtle sounds of nature and some easy-going music playing softly in the background. What if they were blasting AC/DC?  You might love AC/DC (I do), but it’s just not the sort of relaxing experience that would be consistent with getting a massage.  The rock and roll experience is better for a different time and place.

Your audio identity is important, and you should spend time developing a point of view on what you want your customers and consumers to hear when they engage with your brand.  When they call into your call center for customer support, what do they hear?  When they are on your website and watching videos that detail how your products or services work, is there a consistent type of music or sound that reminds them of who you are?  Does the music or sound serve to help calm them — or is it fast, atonal and creates a more chaotic feeling?  If they enter a retail environment, what experience and feel are you looking to create there?

I immediately drift to music selection because music taps into different areas of your brain.  It brings you to a specific place very quickly.  

As I sit and write this column, wordless, “droning” music is playing in the background because it helps me to focus and block out the outside world.  It allows me to follow a train of thought without getting lost.  That kind of music would be horrible while getting a massage, but it can be great for writing or working out and exercising.  Music plays a role in your mood and a brand needs to portray a mood to create a connection with customers.  

In a day dominated by video, voice and sound, what you hear is as important as what you see and the full experience is greater than simply the sum of its parts.  Are you thinking about the total customer experience?