Independent Watchmakers Embrace the Virtual Display Case

For years, many considered the jewelry industry to be one of the best suited retail sectors to resist a major disruption from e-commerce trends. After all, who wants to buy one of their biggest discretionary purchases without seeing or touching it in person?

Watch industry giants such as Rolex, Patek Philippe, and Audemars Piguet were able to benefit from this bias for in-person sales especially, and have remained on top for decades, even despite the recent COVID-19 pandemic.

That said, over the past few years, even before the pandemic, up-start watch companies who knew they would unable to win the window-space war flocked to the internet and embraced digital-first customer experiences.

For example, Thomas Baillod's company BA111OD launched their first watch in October 2019 for about $400 USD, with the large majority of their sales coming from Baillod's personal LinkedIn page. Recognizing that digital experiences would allow new ways to directly market to his customers and provide transparency on the sales process, he began his own take on a influencer program called the "Afluendor" program, where anyone who buys a watch can become an Afluendor, though they are not obligated, and are given up to six "rights to purchase" watches which they can pass on to their network.

Though BA111OD is not coming for Rolex any time soon, Bailod's simple digital marketing and Afluendor program demonstrate that network effects remain incredibly powerful in the fashion and jewelry space.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/18/fashion/watches-independent-brands-online.html?smid=url-share

Digital Marketing & Real Estate

Real estate is not thought of as a digital industry, and consequently, there is not much literature on the web on this topic.  I did, however, find an agency article that provides high level thoughts on the industry, entitled “How Digital Marketing Will Transform Real Estate Industry In 2021” (linked below).

Real estate is a physical asset.  Similar to other industries—recall the example in class of researching a car before purchasing at a lot—real estate customers are utilizing the internet to understand a building’s offerings (floorplan, amenities, etc) before visiting it and ultimately making the decision to rent or purchase.  In the New York City market, Streeteasy is known as the aggregator of this information and rental brokers such as Douglas Elliman are the customer’s go-to contact people about a unit.  However, new construction rental buildings (like the one I work on) must find ways to differentiate themselves from other class A buildings in the neighborhood to have a competitive edge.

I reviewed the article to see what differentiators digital marketing could provide my company. The article mentions Chatbots, Influencers, Augmented Reality, and Blockchain as tools that will be in the future of real estate marketing – all items that are not widely utilized in the NYC leasing process today.  In new construction, the owner hires a leasing brokerage team and the team receives a leasing commission for every unit’s first lease, regardless of how hard they work to lease the unit.  Many of these tools can supplement the brokers’ work or in the long run, disrupt the current compensation structure to the broker, providing savings to the owner.  For example, if a leasing broker is giving a tour – they cannot answer phone calls.  A Chatbot can supplement feedback to renters.  Influencers for real estate only exist through famous sales brokers’ Instagrams – but there is likely a use case for rental that hasn’t been discovered as well as other mediums not currently in use like TikTok.  AR has multiple use applications but the one that is just picking up in the market is allowing someone to view an empty unit as a furnished model unit.  This will be a very valuable tool to owners if the price is right.  Lastly, the article discusses Blockchain, which it says can make tracking customer data more accurate – further research on my end is needed to understand how.

Article: “How Digital Marketing Will Transform Real Estate Industry In 2021” - https://digitalagencynetwork.com/how-digital-marketing-will-transform-real-estate-industry/

Digital marketing ^2

Last Wednesday afternoon, after finishing up a long day at work, I sign onto my email and read an email from my digital marketing professor. I see we need to write a blog post, so I click on the link in the email, and what's the first thing I see? A huge digital ad. On a blog about digital marketing. And this isn't just any ad. It's targeted just for me. It's for a B2B healthcare business that I happened to have a call for work just a few hours earlier. In the past, I would have been shocked. I would have questioned if it was a coincidence. I might have asked a friend if they say saw the same ad or opened up a new browser to see if the same ad would be there. And it might have made me angry. I would have questioned the audacity of this company to be following me around the internet and doing it so blatantly. Whether I would have had that reaction five years ago or ten years ago, it's hard to say. That transition to being bombarded with hyper-specific targeting is so complete that it's hard to remember a time when the internet was not this way. Google anything and ads can be expected in social media feeds or while browsing the news. Shop on the internet and put something in your cart without paying... Then you're bound to get bombarded with emails with discounts and even more ads all over the internet. What struck me while looking at that ad was not how shocking it was but instead, how commonplace. Of course that ad would be there. Even on a digital marketing blog for a digital marketing class. We expect to be tracked wherever we go. Though it may be hard to say when it happened, it has become something we have decided to accept completely.

Humanizing Digital Experience

https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/humanizing-the-digital-experience-in-a-post-pandemic-era/

With the effects of the pandemic still impacting in-person retail brand experiences, the emphasis to build robust digital brand experiences remains heightened and necessary. What this means for companies is to evolve from approaching digital strategy from mainly transaction-focused to creating a more "humanized" digital experience for consumers. Research shows that "95% of consumer decisions take place in the subconscious mind".  Brands, therefore, must enact imaginative and innovative ways to capture the hearts and minds of consumers by creating a series of positive associations in the memory banks of existing and future consumers - whether they are tapping into consumers' deep-rooted values or revolutionizing the "trying on" experiences in a digital realm. 

These insights are not new. And while many brands try to express themselves in engaging ways to connect with their customers, many have also missed the mark. The silver lining during the pandemic is that brands, especially retail companies, have been given a wide range to experiment with different tactics to tap into different human sensitivities and senses that they may have never considered. As we mature away from much of the "commerce" part of e-commerce, we are in for exciting adventures and experiences, as long as they are done responsibly and not drilling into the dark and unhealthy recesses of our psyche. 

 

“Show don’t tell”

The increased trend in short-video social platforms such as TikTok, Instagram and YouTube don’t only prove how videos have been the strategic way to reach customers on social media but also show how shorter videos keep the audience more engaged.  Consumers do not read the captions, hence….. “show don’t tell”.  However, comments, like, #s and share are critical too.

Brands compete every day for share of customers attention by publishing content.  The best way to differentiate themselves from the noise is to catch their attention and doing it quickly.  The goal is to educate the consumers, making them exciting about the product and to create a flawless shopping experience.

In addition to standards videos, virtual reality (VR) is being used as engaging tool and a very entertaining way to deliver brand messages.  In the eyewear industry the virtual "try on" is becoming more and more popular, in fact.

https://www.thenationalnews.com/business/comment/2022/01/02/five-digital-marketing-trends-that-can-help-businesses-in-2022/

Why the Metaverse Will Reshape Digital Marketing For Decades to Come

Digital marketing continues to evolve, and the metaverse offers new ways for companies to engage with consumers. While the metaverse has yet to gain broad adoption among consumers, some companies are racing to be early movers in what could be a significant paradigm shift in customer engagement. Firms such as Nike, Gucci, and Disney have already indicated their commitment to the metaverse, and it's likely more big-name companies will follow.

Customers' interactive involvement in the metaverse is critical for this to pay off for advertisers. Given the nature of the metaverse and its innate customer engagement through the virtual world, it appears poised to be a successful new channel for businesses. As consumer preferences shift toward experiences and personalized content, the metaverse could offer benefits for businesses, creators, influencers, and consumers alike.

Will the metaverse adoption reach a tipping point to make this investment worthwhile for advertisers? And when might this happen? 2022 may be the year we see a big push into this exciting new channel.

 https://www.adweek.com/media/the-metaverse-will-reshape-digital-marketing-for-decades-to-come/

#TikTokMadeMeBuyIt

#TikTokMadeMeBuyIt

The evolution of TikTok has been remarkable. Once seen as an app for entertainment during lockdown (cue awkward videos of your Dad and Mom dancing), then turned educational (learn how to get your tase & smell back post Covid), is now a marketers' dream. And yet, many brands (the one I work for included) are still struggling to figure out how to properly invest in and manage this new channel. Millennials are not watching as much TV, and so they don't see a lot of retailer's TV or video ads, but TikTok sees over one billion monthly users and has a very captive and engaged audience. It's also a platform where scrolling through strangers' content happens more frequently than on Instagram - due largely due its catchy infinite scroll. In a reaction to this platform, Instagram created Reels and then encouraged its followers to promote videos in order to compete with the growing app, using its algorithm and market share to ensure that brands had to follow suit on their app in order to see success. Yet, TikTok still shines - it feels more organic and real than instagram, it's a place of self expression and creativity and likely why large retailers are investing heavily in TikTok campaigns. I'll be curious to see what happens in the coming months as Instagram continues to use its market power to incentivize creators to use Reels (they now pay a bonus when reaching a certain amount of video views) and whether or not TikTok can keep up the momentum. 

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/21/business/tiktok-ads.html

TalkShopLive: Walmart and livestream shopping

https://www.marketingdive.com/news/walmart-teams-with-talkshoplive-as-social-commerce-ramp-up-continues/611464/

The pandemic and the rapid growth of social commerce has made livestream shopping a hot trend for global ecommerce brands. Although livestream shopping has been around for quite a while, particularly with Alibaba in China, the large U.S.-based retailers have recently adopted this virtual approach to shopping. This article provides insight into Walmart’s partnership with TalkShopLive, a social-shopping platform that allows brands to feature live shoppable content across Walmart’s owned-and-operated channels & partner sites.

The partnership positions Walmart to compete directly with Amazon’s Live Creator App (launched in 2019) and other retailers who are embracing this trend. I think this in-video selling concept, and influencer-led livestreams, will help Walmart attract a younger demographic of shoppers and create a community for home shopping. I see the current streams on Walmart Shop Live are 30-, 60-, and 90-minute+ videos. We saw a stat earlier on humans having a shorter attention span than a goldfish, so I wonder how many live and on-demand views convert to a transaction…and I am also curious how long it will take Walmart to see a profitable return on this new platform. However, based on Casey Schlaybaugh’ s quote in the article, Walmart’s objective is to focus on their reach and customer experience right now, and eventually this added element of entertainment can lead to long-term ROI for the company. 

Impact of Personalization and Zero-Party Data into 2022

 https://techcrunch.com/2022/01/04/4-trends-that-will-define-e-commerce-in-2022/?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAM0ghOSUxwFkvQnWQnAKgiu5qlmLSdb85R91XppfqU40XakymQ8y7vwDynVC2SsDNe3its8NfwqFyk0Pu0VGgTc-HJ19mrCBKIU5zgh_k3v0XbannjhwlSwGpgSXhuX-xhzCLGThNF3p5TpiFOlI1szEGEy8kzRphKb16owB6f6D

As the digital marketing space continues to gain transaction and scope, it is expected that headwinds and regulation will follow. One change in particular is highlighted in the article referenced above, which mentions the data privacy trends initiated by Apple, allowing users to opt out of data tracking on iOS 14.5. This change specifically had a large impact on Facebook marketing campaigns, as they leveraged the data tracked here extensively, and was, a large part, why their targeting was so successful. The impact of this change has already been felt at Facebook, and the businesses that aggressively utilized the median for advertising purposes are starting to forced to look at different marketing engines to ensure they continue to attract and obtain customers effectively. A similar change may occur when Google Chrome gets rid of third-party cookie support, which a number of advertise leverage for data purposes as well. Given digital marketing is strongly tied to the strength of the data at which it is working off of, incremental changes such as these will continue to have ripple effects on the landscape, and may change where dollars flow to and from. In addition, as the industry only continues to grow, it would be expected that similar changes will continue to follow, the digital marketing industry, and the businesses that rely heavily on the digital marketing space, to remain innovative and nimble to stay ahead of the curve. 

The Silent Consumer

Verizon Media Says 69 Percent Of Consumers Watching Video With Sound Off

https://www.forbes.com/sites/tjmccue/2019/07/31/verizon-media-says-69-percent-of-consumers-watching-video-with-sound-off/?sh=2b7e6ca835d8

When Forbes posted this article in 2019, we were having the exact same conversation in my office. Now in 2022, the numbers are higher and we're seeing that the overwhelming majority of our NBA fans are consuming our digital content in silence. Our competitive advantage is that unlike most products, the product of sport is easily communicated with visuals, even when the small nuances are lost. Even though the announcer voiceovers, crowd roars and player banter enhances the excitement, you don't need to hear it to know that there is a shared passion and intensity between everyone in the room, thus motivating people to want to go to a game. But what about other products, ones that need more help introducing themselves?

I don't have the answers, but I know that whatever automated captions Facebook is using is not working well. In my experience, words are often mismatched and meaning is lost. That may not be a big deal for a non-essential product's marketing campaign, but it could have larger consequences for essential products, news media, etc. Should all companies be incorporating their own captions until there are more sophisticated softwares to choose from? When will captions become more mainstream in digital marketing and thus create a new standard for consuming content?

Why Digital Marketing is Important for Small Business

 

https://digitalmarketinginstitute.com/blog/why-digital-marketing-is-important-for-small-business

Contrary to what many people believe, digital marketing is not reserved for large corporations with large marketing budgets only. It can work for any business of any size in any industry, including small businesses. This article discusses how digital marketing can play a crucial role for small businesses to increase its visibility and brand awareness as well as convert interest into customers. The pandemic has accelerated the customers’ adoption of digital channels which means that digital is where businesses can find and engage with their customers. With digital marketing, small businesses have an opportunity to target either a wide and unlimited audience or certain geographic or niche markets.  In addition, digital marketing tools and platforms provide analytics that allows them to measure the effectiveness of their campaigns and more importantly, the ROI. With this data, they are able to make an informed decision on whether to continue with their campaigns or experiment with others. Lastly, digital marketing has become so popular that small businesses must incorporate it into their overall strategy in order to thrive and keep up with the competition. Fortunately, digital marketing is scalable and cost-effective so it can be done even with a small budget.

Best Buy Continues Trend- Launches Advertising/ Retail Media Business

It's not just google, facebook (meta), and youtube that are in the business of selling advertising to brands. Retailers too have started to launch their own advertising platforms over the last few years- Target (Roundel), Walmart (Walmart Connect), Amazon (Amazon Media Group) to name a few.  This has been, in part, catapulted by with shifting consumer and shopper behavior.   

Best Buy, a leading electronics retailer, is the latest to launch it's own advertising business.  They are looking to leverage the millions of touch points they have with valuable shoppers, access to their information and shopping behavior through their first party data, and Best Buy’s digital platforms to help brands better connect with consumers and shoppers.   And of course, create a new revenue stream for Best Buy.     With the continued increase in digital media spending by brands, it is certainly a ripe time for Best Buy to look to capture it’s fair share. Given Best Buy’s strong position in this segment and that they already have a good understanding of what works with their shoppers, they should be poised to capture digital media spending dollars from brand partners.    It will be interesting to see if Best Buy is able to successfully build out and operate the in-house team.    They are competing with established players for talent and brand dollars.  Will they deliver better experience and results?

Read More on Best Buy: https://www.emarketer.com/content/best-buy-launches-in-house-ad-business

Read More on Retail Media: https://www.thetradedesk.com/us/news/why-retail-media-is-the-ad-industrys-sleeping-giant

12 key digital marketing trends 

https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/12-digital-marketing-trends-all-business-owners-and-marketers-should-know-i/616647/

This article highlights key trends that are important for any company - from a start up to a well established one. Regardless of what we see and hear about the dangers of privacy, digital tools are here to stay. And provide a quick and easy way to reach wider audiences, if done properly. A quick synopsis of a few key elements from the perspective of a start up company is laid out below. 

a) It is essential to have a thoughtful and nimble digital strategy - there is so much information being thrown at people that it is important to identify what you want your customers to focus on when you get their attention and how will you reach them (influencers, experiences are some of the focal areas).

b) Facebook/Meta and LinkedIn are platforms that are here to stay and should be part of your digital strategy. 

c) A mobile friendly and optimized website is critical. 

d) Pay attention to privacy. 

Nike purchases NFT Metaverse sneakers, fad or future?

Over a year after the pandemic has decimated the supply chain for fashion brands, Nike acquires startup brand RTFKT, who specialises in virtual accessories including sneakers. Is this acquisition a moment when Nike has succumbed to current fads or is Nike looking to lead into the future of the Metaverse?

It would appear that the subject of NFTs are all the rage and is the new hot topic that can be overheard at most social gatherings. Fashion brands, not wanting to be left out of the current trends, have started to move into the virtual space. Even Prada is enlisting virtual influencers to keep up with the current trends. 

As the user experience of wearing the garments has been an essential element to a fashion brand, how could virtual fashion be a part of long-term strategy for fashion brands? Nike, having a recent history of using technology to interact with its consumers directly, has the foresight to gather data from their consumers to keep them with an edge in a competitive retail landscape. Nike Training Club, also known as NTC, and the Nike collaboration Apple watch show that Nike is investing into technology to keep in touch with the consumer and their needs. Will the acquisition of RTFKT give Nike another advantage at acquiring consumer’s data? Only the future will tell. 

Read more at: https://www.businessoffashion.com/articles/technology/nike-acquires-virtual-fashion-start-up-rtfkt/

The Importance of Customer Data Management for Marketing Initiatives

https://martech.org/how-to-overcome-data-silos-and-fragmentation/

 I'm not sure the extent to which members of our class deal with the topics described in the article above, but I run into them frequently in my day to day work.  The articles discusses challenges associated with mastering and creating a unified view of customer touchpoints. While in class we discussed difficulties with marketing attribution, a great deal of effort is often spent defining the appropriate technology infrastructure and processes to even understand how you are engaging with a particular customer across various marketing tactics.

The article mentions how data from different marketing touchpoints may come from varying platforms which were intended to collect data from particular tactics, not to necessarily create a unified view of a customer across tactics. Some data sources might collect different attributes about the customer, or capture the same attributes differently. A representative from the cloud-based data management company Snowflake describes that organizations generally deploy data architectures to help marketers answer business questions for a need at a specific point in time. However, as these architectures grow and become more complex they, require a reassessment and a revised approach that is more holistic in serving generalized use cases. The article clearly serves as a plug for Snowflake's use as a centralized hub of marketing information or "Data Cloud", but this doesn't necessarily diminish the real obstacles posed by fragmented marketing data.

I work for a life sciences consulting firm that advises biopharmaceutical companies on issues related to commercial strategy. My team is actively working to scope a project for a prospective client whose organization already has many marketing data sources and agencies who produce such data, but which is still unable to develop a holistic map of customers journeys and preferences across the data which it collects. Our project is intended to define a structured approach to assist the client in standardizing the way marketing data is collected and shared within the organization, which is precisely the challenge described in this article. 

I'd be very interested to get perspectives from students in the class on if/how they might have encountered these types of challenges in their own professional roles.

Denny's gets into gaming with presence on multiplayer platforms

Over the past few years, Denny's has begun a digital transformation in attempt to become more costumer-centric and to attract younger consumers. In support of its transformation, Denny's has leveraged unique and engaging digital marketing efforts. In April 2020, Denny's took its digital engagement to the next level by meeting the target customer where he/she is at and joining the gaming universe. Denny's created a gamer account, Dennys247, on Nintendo's Switch, Microsoft's Xbox and Sony's PS4 where the company played games with customers while offering discounts for food ordered through its On-Demand platform, a key sales driver (this channel's importance accelerated during the pandemic as in-person dining options became restricted/limited).

Denny’s gaming initiative was an immediate hit. Within 20 hours, Denny's reached its friend limit on Nintendo and saw a 26% engagement rate on Instagram with more than 81,000 impressions on total engagements of almost 20,000. Also, on Twitter, Denny's experienced a 15% engagement rate with about 154,000 impressions and total engagements of more than 23,000. This interactive gaming experience resonated well with customers and attracted immediate attention driving increased brand heat.

As evidenced by this use-case, Denny's digital marketing efforts have the potential to considerably increase the company's traction and relevancy with younger diners- accelerating strategic goals.

Article of reference: https://www.marketingdive.com/news/dennys-gets-into-gaming-with-presence-on-multiplayer-platforms/576590/

2 Digital Marketing Trends to Consider for 2022

https://www.inc.com/peter-roesler/2-digital-marketing-trends-to-consider-for-2022.html

Interactive Content & Conversational Marketing were noted as two digital marketing trends to consider for 2022. As the pandemic continues I believe these will continue to increase in importance and become major conversion drivers. As the pandemic keeps people home, people are turning online as a form of entertainment and escapism and brands have an opportunity to establish themselves as content creators and thought leaders. 

I believe customers are looking for more than just product listings and brand loyalty will begin to shift to where customers feel connected and where they feel they are getting more than just the product. For example, instead of just listing a beauty product for sale, brands can host a live Q&A with the creator, have influencers share videos of how they use the product and speak to it’s benefits, share user generated content and host beauty Q&As to create engagement. By establishing themselves as experts and building a community they will become a trusted resource. Based on engagement brands will be able to target customers with ‘like’ products and build customer retention while increasing the customer's lifetime value. 

While getting to know the customer and engaging with them is important I think there is risk with increased personalization and automation of messaging. Suggesting a product a customer may like based on something they viewed could help start a conversation and build conversion or it could make the brand feel like ‘Big Brother.’ There needs to be a clear strategy and mindfulness around messaging in order to avoid that. In addition customers are starting to have more control over their privacy and limiting what brands can track and what they are willing to share. Leveraging tracking and automation will be important in identifying audiences and building content but having the human resources to build and support Interactive Content & Conversational marketing will be key in maintaining it.

PTON - Hit or Miss - The Bears are Starting to Backslide

 Peloton (Tkr: PTON) had an impressive run in 2020 with COVID-19 serving as a once-in-a-lifetime seeming catalyst - leading to a quintupling of the stock price. Consumers rode their hearts out to... well nowhere (because the bikes are stationary) and investors... welp, ended up nowhere too. Fundamentalists point to irrationally bullish forecasting and blown-out-of-the water valuations and thematic investors are simply left scratching their heads. Retail investors now look at their $1,000+ piece of equipment in their homes and cringe at the thought of the status of their PA accounts - double whammy. What the hell happened? 

Will PTON get out of this slump? There is much speculation about what might bring the stock back but, even the street's biggest bulls have cut their price targets by 50% or more. Talks of a major overhaul of valuation methodology are particularly interesting. The stock has been covered predominately by tech analysts but, now some wonder - is this a media stock? Am I buying a piece of Alex Toussaint or a stationary bike (boy does that make me giddy). Personally, one of the most interesting "opportunities" I see for PTON is rooted in behavioral psychology as well as advertising. I believe PTON is not going anywhere. Like any diet that worked, consumers will always remember the time they bought and regularly used their bike or tread and how they looked and felt. Not only will these feel-good moments never leave their memories, but they are also tied to a particularly memorable and monumental time in the lives of its consumer base. PTON has found a small ~4ft x 3ft space in your home and in your heart and will not be going anywhere. If PTON hone its unique position within its marketing strategy, it will not stay stationary. PTON's opportunity is worth a lot more than the metal frame one mounts and I'd put my money where my mouth is on that. 

Resetting the Conversation Around Marketing Privacy in the Metaverse

With the increasing interest and investments from many companies into this relatively nascent space, there's an open question around how privacy will be treated once or if the adoption picks up. Like we've seen in the past, whenever there are technological shifts, challenges emerge. In this case the challenges revolve around a lack of fundamental technical knowledge around virtual reality, limited exposure of the ecosystem to policy makers and general lack of confidence in consumers' mindsets. 

That said, the metaverse could offer the opportunity for companies and brands to learn from their past digital marketing efforts and create a privacy compliant marketing environment from the start. The development of the metaverse may be similar to the development and evolution of the internet including the role that advertisers play as new ecosystems are developed. It is therefore important for brands to actively engage in privacy conversations and play an active role in shaping the privacy framework for this new digital world.

Earlier, web cookies used to play an important role for tracking consumer behavior. However, Google plans to wind this down by 2023 which offers the opportunity to incubate safer methods for tracking such as contextual marketing that can be implemented in the meta verse. Another avenue to explore is to integrate community based decision making such as "community-based commerce" on TikTok that brands have leveraged to promote their products.

https://www.marketingdive.com/news/why-metaverse-could-be-breakthrough-privacy-compliant-digital-marketing/610661/

Basics of virtual economy to create demand

A lot of apps nowadays are testing out gamification mechanics hoping to improve and diversify their monetization channels. Implementing virtual currency is a common technique. An app or a game without virtual currency basically have to either charge people upfront or everywhere would be blocked by pay-walls. Virtual currency consolidated microtransactions to be a lot more manageable to the developer and a lot less intimidating to the users. 

The key for a virtual economy to work is demand. 

To understand demand in a particular ecosystem, one has to understand the user motivation. What is it that the users want in your app? For example, in a game, people want to have fun. There are many different ways your product can entertain a user. Understanding those motivation means you can identify the points of demand in which virtual currency can be placed. The more your user base uses those virtual currency, the probability of them purchasing more of those currencies would be higher; hence, increasing revenue. That is one high level perspective on how to tune for demand / sink of virtual currency.

To keep a level of good retention and engagement, the app or game would need to "source" the economy a bit - to provide some currency channel for the user to earn some currency as rewards for actions done. The amount rewarded would depend on the intrinsic motivations for users to engage with a particular feature in your product. High intrinsic value, you can source less or none; low intrinsic value should be sourced more. 

Amazon SEO & A9 algorithm

 

Amazon search engine optimization (Amazon SEO) is the process of optimizing your Amazon product listings to rank more highly in Amazon searches for related keywords. When you optimize your product listing, you make it easier for Amazon to find your listing and show it to shoppers who are looking for something like your product. 

Amazon SEO involves:

• Amazon keyword optimization
• Amazon product title optimization
• Product image optimization
• Backend keywords
• Pricing strategy
• The Amazon A9 algorithm

A9 is the algorithm Amazon uses for product searches. The Amazon A9 algorithm is a ranking process that influences where products appear for a particular keyword on the Amazon search engine results page (SERP).

Amazon ranks related to how likely the searcher will be to purchase the product.

How does A9 algorithm work? 

1. Amazon looks at the keywords in the shopper’s search query. If your product listing doesn’t have every keyword in the search query, it probably won’t appear in the search results, which is why keyword optimization is a big piece of Amazon SEO.

2. Amazon tries to assess purchase likelihood based on how well your product has performed in the past. To do this, the algorithm looks at these metrics at the keyword level: 

• Search result click-through-rate (CTR)
• Conversion rate on the product page
• Overall sales

Reference: https://tinuiti.com/blog/amazon/amazon-seo/ 

Chipotle Turned Its Cilantro Soap Meme Into A Real Product

 

https://www.mashed.com/676528/chipotle-turned-its-cilantro-soap-meme-into-a-real-product/

Nowadays, brands continually leverage social network and other emerging channels to engage young customers, who spend a significant amount of time in their digital life. In August, chipotle put up a controversial Instagram post making fun of cilantro, which is often seen as an ingredient in chipotle’s menu. The post showed a chipotle branded cilantro Soup. In the caption, chipotle states “OK but what if soap tasted like cilantro?” The post created lot of excitements on the internet, receiving 22.5K likes and 632 responses from cilantro lovers and haters. On Dec. 2^nd, chipotle announced that they bought this popular meme to life and started to sell it on chipotlegoods.com. The news got a lot of attentions from many networks, including cnn, fox news, CBS Boston, etc. This is a very successful digital marketing campaign focusing on creating native culture content. It also highlights the importance to connect online experience and social buzz with real life experience. These marketing activities are very effective and efficacious in building the brand's culture and value, particular appealing to young customers.

Twitter's new CEO innovation focus

Twitter had a big shake up this week when they announced their former CEO, co-founder Jack Dorsey, would be stepping down. Twitter's stock had a rough week, trading down 10% on the week and now sits down more than 20% on the year. The new CEO, Parag Agrawal, has his work cut out for him as he tries to improve the companies performance. This Barron's article touches on how Twitter is working on improving its product innovation. One of the areas they are focusing on is Brand advertising innovation, where their performance has lagged its competitors. Twitter's brand ad revenue currently dwarfs its direct-response ad revenue; direct response only makes up 15%. The new CEO needs to continue putting effort behind improving direct-response ad revenue to reach their target goal of a 50/50% revenue split. https://www.barrons.com/articles/twitter-stock-ceo-51638548530?tesla=y

BAT is surging, should Ad platforms be worried?

Basic Attention Token or BAT has increased in value recently as more retailers are accepting it as a form of payment.  BAT has had an impressive year, surging about 50% in the past week and 700% year-to-date, spiking to $1.85 this past week.  So why the spike? This past week Regal Cinemas announced that it will accept BAT as a form of payment at its movie theatres for ticket and snack purchases.  Other reasons for the surge include the expanding popularity of Brave and its challenge to Google Chrome.  Brave gives users control over ad frequency, ad scheduling, and control how much or little information they provide to brands. Users earn BAT by selectively choosing to view ads.  This behavior is likely very attractive to advertisers because this selection shows high intent from customer.  This is likely not an immediate threat to traditional browser advertising models, but this recent growth should be concerning to Google and others.  Not only because more retailers may begin to accept BAT as a form of payment but also given that Web3, specifically the terms crypto and block chain, are expanding outside of the niche technology world and into the mainstream consciousness.  

Source: https://marketrealist.com/p/basic-attention-token-bat-price-prediction-10-dollar/

Nestlé Thinks Ecommerce is Pretty Sweet

The multinational food conglomerate Nestlé is doubling down that Ecommerce will be a major source of its sales by 2025. Targeting that online sales will make up 25% of all sales by that year, the company is making significant investments in the digital marketing space. The proof is in the pudding too as Nestlé intends to increase the amount of money spent on digital marketing from 47% of the marketing budget to 70% in four years. Those investments intend to be spent on content, search, and customer feedback. Data acquisition is a big part of this initiative as Nestlé hopes to leverage information about their customers and turn it into sophisticated data science models that highlight purchase behavior and product selection. It's clear the company knows that investments made in this space has a bit of a flywheel effect: Acquire customers successfully online, capture their data, learn from their behaviors, build products and experiences that serve those customers and behaviors, and do it all over again. In order to get that off the ground though, investments must be made and that's just what they're doing. 

Source: 

https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/nestle-aims-generate-quarter-total-sales-e-commerce-by-2025-2021-11-17/

With Jack Dorsey Out, How Will Twitter Change?

 

Twitter is an online news and social networking site where people can communicate in short messages called “tweets.” Tweeting is posting short messages for anyone who follows you on Twitter or searches for content, with the hope that your words are useful and interesting to someone in your audience.  Some people use Twitter to discover interesting people and companies online, opting to follow their tweets.

One of the criticisms against Twitter was the lack of big innovations.  That said, the platform ran its first livestreaming event during Black Friday partnering with Walmart and Jason Derulo highlighting some of the best deals.  This type of change to the platform can mean significant changes to how the consumer shops.  This will also influence the way companies advertise.

What’s exciting to see is if Twitter can use its platform and transition moments of breaking news into targeted ads for new retail products.  This change could challenge social platforms, like Instagram and Tik Tok.  The future will be told, one tweet at a time…

Facebook’s new haptic glove lets you feel things in the metaverse

Facebook has been developing a haptic glove which allows users to feel bursts of air to simulate the sense of touch. This effort has been in progress for about seven years. With it's debut, Facebook is looking to create a virtual space to simulate real like experience without physically being anywhere expect the comfort of your own home. The glove is expected to integrate into Meta's virtual reality technology offerings.

This technology may not be appealing to people outside of gamers initially as putting on large goggles and wearing big gloves may not serve as the best customer experience. Not to mention, as the article discusses the feeling of being more invasive. The technology also can track and collect data about a person's movements. As privacy and data protection begin to be more of a focal point, this technology opens up the door for more of a concern.

Source: Facebook’s new haptic glove lets you feel things in the metaverse - Vox

Drones and its use in Digital Marketing Campaigns

While watching YouTube last week I came across a video of drones used for a marketing campaign. The Shanghai-based company used the drones to form a QR Code in the sky which can be scanned to lead to their site. This was so astonishing to see that I started researching and found out that many companies in Hong Kong are using these drones to light up the sky to promote their brands.

Drones can be used for various marketing strategies in promoting your digital marketing agenda. Commercial drone usage is spiking in a variety of industries, including agriculture, real estate, construction, news media, entertainment, film production, energy, and many more. Before drones became a commercial asset, it was hard to effectively display the depth or expansiveness of the products, properties or projects that many industries need to demonstrate to audiences. As part of the emerging technologies, this can be an excellent source of generating more traffic to your websites and showing off creativity.

Link to the QR Drone video: https://youtu.be/mj8uIr4oQRU

Digital Marketing Goes Physical

Digital Marketing Goes Physical 

One of the big selling points of digital marketing is attribution.  Digital marketers can granularly track the connectivity between marketing spend and revenue. Being able to construct these ROI analyses enables them to justify increasing spending and informs shifting spend between multiple channels.

This success has driven the search to add quantification and enable ROI calculations for offline advertising mediums as well.  One way this has been accomplished is through unique QR codes that brings the potential customer online and into the trackability-**LIMELIGHT**...enabled by the built-in QR reader in smart phones and the ubiquity of those smart phones.

And of course, MarTech / AdTech companies (e.g., Tapple) have sprung up to enable this trend seamlessly. Whether billboards, subway benches, on-product, or physical media this same QR-code driven tracking enables the ROI calc's at scale and in a standardized platform.  In essence taking the complexity of tracking across many physical channels and digitizing & centralizing them.  Cool, huh?

But, the trick is getting people to actually scan the QR codes...these are the 'clicks' but how many impressions are there and how many purchases/conversions did that drive outside of the narrow lens of QR world?  Marketers are still using 'multipliers' based on one-off studies or rules of thumb, the opportunity still exists to go further with offline quantification.  

This blogger is eager to see how that evolves.

Source: https://adage.com/article/tapple/how-use-qr-codes-achieve-experiential-roi/2384196

CMA:1 - Facebook: 0

 https://on.ft.com/3obnFzL

Someone once mentioned in conversation that Mark Zuckerberg's only reason for acquiring Instagram was so that it would not become something significant. A killer acquisition, as they call it. Luckily for Zuckerberg and Facebook (or, Meta, as we are forced to called it now), that deal went through without any regulatory pushback. Much as the company's acquisition of Whatsapp...

But those days are over. The UK's competition regulator, the CMA (Competition Marketing Authority) has effectively blocked a deal for Meta's acquisition of GIPHY, an online search engine for GIFs. 

Blocking the deal is a blow to Facebook (Meta) because it signals the end of an era when the company was able to make moves in a relatively unchecked market. All bets are on the table. Companies that seem to pose little to no competitive advantage are now being thought of as what they could represent (read: Instagram) if Facebook (Meta) were to own them. At 315M dollars, the deal would have represented another important consolidation for Facebook (Meta) to control the digital marketing space. Even though GIPHY does not run advertisements, and of course Facebook (Meta) is obfuscating its reasons for purchase interest in stating that GIPHY could never have competed with them on advertising, who is to say it couldn't have gotten there in the future... That is exactly the kind of scrutinizing questions that the CMA is asking, and will continue to do so from now into the future.

What's FB worth to you?

 I was in a different class recently and the topic of paying for free services came up. Basic outline of the conversation,  you don't like Google or FB or whoever tracking your data, then pay for it!

First, do people actually want this? And two...assuming you trust the polls...what would people actually be willing to pay?

On the first question, despite how little folks trust FB, a whopping 77% said they wouldn't pay to use the service free of ads. Now, part of me is not surprised by this but maybe not for the most obvious reason, i.e., people just prefer free over paying. I think it is more a statement that we all utilize the "free" model from many companies and simply cannot imagine having to make the choice of whether to pay or give them up. It has become cultural in a way to expect services to be free. It has become expected that companies will harvest the data. So why fight it?

Second, of the 23% who said they would pay (not that I really trust this number or group's sincerity lol), 41.6% said the would pay $1 to 5 / month, 24.9% said they would pay $ to 10 / month and the remaining roughly 1/3rd said they would pay above $10. 

I guess my conclusion really is already spelled out: we hate FB or tech companies or FAANGs, etc., but their business model is culturally accepted. Not loved but accepted. 

https://www.vox.com/2018/4/11/17225328/facebook-ads-free-paid-service-mark-zuckerberg

On the Hunt for Digital Marketing and Related Jobs?

https://danburycountry.com/looking-for-a-new-career-heres-what-top-social-media-jobs-pay/

With widespread news about labor shortages and themes including the Great Resignation mainstays in the daily news, I was curious what about digital marketing jobs? Largely a role in my mind that can be done remotely, how has the industry fared in terms of employment statistics through the pandemic? Not surprising given widespread use of the internet only began in the mid-90s, digital marketing and related is a job new field, but one of the most explosive industries in terms of employment (spurred by a largely WFH component). The article above shares some insights into those looking to potentially pivot into a social media/digital marketing or ancillary role.

The Rise of Email this Holiday Season

Kate Kaye at Protocol discusses how the impact of losing access to third-party company data has made retailers even more incentivized to acquire the email addresses of customers this holiday season. This is hardly surprising, and a logical response of retailers to deal with an impaired ability to target their ideal customer profile through paid advertising channels such as display, search and social.

One wonders whether limiting the effectiveness of marketers in one channel just drives them to others, and whether that ultimately results in a better experience for consumers.

Which is worse - being advertised to with relevant messages, or being advertised to with irrelevant messages?

A push to more email marketing from loosely related retailers may drive customers to explore options to keep their inbox clean.  Email clients have begun to emerge (see Superhuman and Hey) that create a whitelisting process which forces all new email senders to be vetted before they make it to a user's inbox.  A shift to email marketing risks spoilage of that channel in the same way we've seen the rise of ad-blocking software to target display ads.

If marketers see opt-in email as the path forward in an era where targeting through paid channels has become less effective, they need to very careful to make sure that the content they produce is at least as relevant and as targeted as their paid ads, if not more so, otherwise this channel too may cease to bear fruit.

3 Digital Marketing Ideas Every Startup, No Matter the Budget, Can Implement Now

 https://www.techfunnel.com/martech/digital-marketing-idea/

This article came at an interesting time. First of all, OMAO is at a stage where Bai was (a small, home-office startup beverage brand). Secondly, our class last Saturday just talked about Google Product Listing Ads (PLAs). 

I really like the third point of this article 'Finally, analyze your data'. I have been running Google Ads for almost a year now, but I rarely check the analytic data. I really need to check this data consistently to know if the marketing campaign is working and assess my progress.  

Sales technique in mobile gaming 2

Last time I have mentioned one brief example of the innovative monetization technique in mobile gaming. I would like to take the chance to explore a few more.

Lucky Spinning Wheel

Lucky Spinning Wheel is a very typical monetization technic for casual and social casino game. Disney Emoji Blitz took the idea further, instead of just having a wheel that simply charges players for cash per spin, it gives you a free spin for the first time and immediately transition to a "deluxe" (cash) version of the wheel to entice you to spin with real money. The most interesting part is that if you still don't convert, it will give you chances to spin the free wheel per ad-watch while providing a discount to the deluxe wheel every time you watch an ad making the deluxe wheel cheaper every time you spin the free wheel. 

Customizable Bundles

This idea simply gives the flexibly to customize and buy your own virtual item bundles to maximize the value per player. The idea mostly comes from individualized segmentation, satisfying the right customer at the right time.

Limited Quantity (Scarcity) 

This idea is fairly simple as well. It capitalizes on limiting the purchasable content to artificially create scarcity so that developers can inflate the cost of these virtual collections. 

Instagram Digital Marketing

In 2015, number of monthly users of instagram is 400 millions. Between 2015 - 2018, number of monthly users of instagram increases 200 millions each year. Since I am a user for 5 years without shopping on instagram, I am interested about instagram digital marketing. As we can see, advertisements show up when we view stories and posts on instagram. And algorithm behind the screen always sends users what they are interested. Here are some fun facts of instagram that help me to know more about instagram digital marketing.

Fun Facts

• The Instagram explore page is viewed by 200 million accounts daily.
• The most liked photo on Instagram is a photo of an egg with 55+ million likes. 
• More than 50 billion photos have been uploaded to Instagram so far.
• 1,074 photos are uploaded on Instagram every second. 
• 50% of Instagram users use explore page every month.
• Posts With a Location Get 79% more engagement.
• 60% of people say they discover new products on Instagram.
• Photos with faces get 38% more likes.
• Posts with at least one hashtag average 12.6% more engagement.
• Most-used Giphy sticker in Stories is by Red and Howling
• Women use Instagram 56.5% more than men in the U.S. 
• Instagram users engage more on weekdays with Wednesday and Thursday showing most engagement.
• More than half of Instagram Captions & Comments Contain Emojis.
• Instagram videos get over 2 times more engagement than Instagram photos.
• The most popular hashtags on Instagram are #Love, #Instagood, #Photooftheday, #Fashion, and #Beautiful.
• The most popular hashtag on Instagram is #Love, used 1.835+ billion times. 
• Pizza is the most Instagrammed food globally, followed by Sushi.
• Nano-influencers(500-5k followers) make an average of $114 per video post on Instagram, compared with $100 for an image post and $43 for a story.
• Power users(30k-500k followers) make an average of $775 for an Instagram video, $507 for an image post and $210 for a story.
• 68% of people come to Instagram to interact with creators.
• IGTV app has 7 million installs worldwide.
• There were 5 million uploaded videos within the first 24 hours after Instagram announced the video feature in 2013.

Reference:

https://www.omnicoreagency.com/instagram-statistics/

How AI Has The Potential To Transform Digital Marketing

A Forbes article that I recently came across outlined some interesting points on how artificial intelligence is significantly contributing towards the transformation of digital marketing. On a macro level, AI can be a useful tool to gain information on a company's target audience by big data and machine learning processes. Once this information is collected, it becomes easier to create a much more personalized and targeted outreach. A few key observations include:

• AI can help in eliminating the risk of human error and optimize digital marketing campaigns. That said AI-technology today cannot exactly replicate the human touch but may very well be able to come close in the future.

• AI has the potential to help create and curate content. Once created, it might be able to target the ideal audience on relevant platforms. To take it a step further, AI may also be able to build on what's available today and help generate ideas with respect to content strategy.

• Programmatic advertising can greatly benefit from advances in AI and businesses can increase their ROI by leveraging programs that can streamline the purchase and personalization of ads.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2019/08/21/how-artificial-intelligence-is-transforming-digital-marketing/?sh=27bb43d121e1

Subprime Attention Crisis Review

 I recently read Tim Hwang's Subprime Attention Crisis: Advertising and the Time Bomb at the Heart of the Internet.  Hwang draws a strong comparison between technological advances of the digital marketing industry, to the financial industry.  The way digital advertising auctions have been automated is very similar to the way financial exchanges have been automated.  This may not have been coincidental, and in fact a number of the tech/marketing executives responsible for the development of the modern digital advertising business model, are former Wall St executives. 

The advancement of digital advertising have been very fast and transformative to the industry. This speed of development often leads to opacities. Hwang argues that these opacities are not unlike the cloudiness that led to the 2008 financial crisis.

Reading this book did not make me feel urgent concern for the state of the industry. Hwang also acknowledges that most agree that digital marketing is expected to keep growing strongly in the immediate future.  However; it did introduce a different perspective I hadn't considered before. I do now think there is more fragility in the industry than I previously thought. If tech companies were no longer able to capture and commodify our attentions at the same level, the trickle down effects could be large scale and immediate. Tech companies are heavily reliant on advertising revenues; even though that was not in their original business plans (ex. Google).  The reader of Hwang's book is prompted to imagine an internet where many free services we rely on suddenly came at a cost. Imagine paying a membership fee to use social media sites like Facebook and Instagram. What if you had to pay every time you wanted to look up directions in Google Maps? The downstream impact of turmoil in digital advertising space could be tremendous. Regardless of how probable that outcome is, it is important to be continually cognizant of how much the internet we know today is dependent on the success of the digital marketing industry.

Boohooman turns to AR for 'Hack Friday' campaign

 

A men fashion store Boohooman recently launched its 1^st augmented reality ads for Black Friday campaign. The campaign ads is featured on many billboards and fly posters. Once the bar code on the flyer is scanned, the ‘hacker‘ Robin will come alive and offer deeper discounts.

This interests me as it demonstrates that how AR can provide enhanced values to a two dimensional static ads. Compared to a passive image or video, AR ads unarguably catches customer’s attention and engages customer to interact with the ads in real-time. Through the interaction, customers would have immersed experience with positive emotions associated with the brand. It has been shown that the AR ads are more effective in increasing brand awareness. In addition, among the homogenous competition, the interactive AR ads could create differentiated experience to help the brand to stand out. Apparently, Facebook has already partnered with Spark AR Partner Network to create augmented reality ads. As more customers consider AR ads to be fun and engaging, it is expected that more brands will incorporate AR ads into their overall digital marketing strategy.  

https://mobilemarketingmagazine.com/boohooman-turns-to-ar-for-hack-friday-campaign

Nike's Mind Sets

Continuing the trend of discussing Nike's digital initiatives on this blog, the article I came across was about Nike's focus on mental health. In light of several professional athletes recently speaking out on their mental health struggles, Nike is launching New Mind which will focus on "how your feeling" rather then "what you are achieving". Nike will roll out the program across their digital apps and social media platforms in addition to spreading the message through their influencers. It is awesome to see Nike using their strong brand name to progress the discussion further in an effort to help many people in need. https://www.insidehook.com/daily_brief/sports/nikes-mind-sets-program-focus-mental-health

Metaverse - the final frontier

 

Metaverse - the Final Frontier

Nike partnered with Robolox to create 'Nikeland' in the metaverse. Separately, Niantic is focused on the real-world metaverse - also known as augmented reality (AR).  These two perspectives both create a lot of new digital advertising space - literally a world of it. Much as video opened up a whole new advertising medium over the web, to too will the metaverse (VR) and AR...except with a lot more space for ads.

The question will be who will own this new space?  The final frontier will have the fiercest competition. The largest companies of all time have honed their business models, understanding when to take share and how to show patience. Facebook was able to scoop up Instagram for $1B because they saw the potential that mobile & image-forward social had. Google was able to scoop up YouTube at a bargain ($2.5B now valued at $100B+) because they saw the advertising potential in video.  

As technology matures for the next generation of new platforms to emerge into social consciousness, the fight for supremacy from the existing tech giants will be cutthroat - none willing to give into the others. 

The question is what will the new micro-targeting opportunities be for advertisements in the metaverse & AR.  Will ad placements evolve or just be similar ?  Will this new medium create more value for advertising or just same stuff different place?  Growing the industry like Social Media has, at the cost of print news and TV, is what the Metaverse has on the horizon.

Sources:

https://www.marketingdive.com/news/nike-courts-next-generation-of-athletes-with-new-roblox-platform-nikeland/610343/

https://www.marketingdive.com/news/niantic-pushes-vision-for-real-world-metaverse-in-first-brand-campaign/610287/

Google Is Not Worried About the Metaverse as They Figure out Their Next Trillion Dollars

After crossing the $2 trillion dollar valuation, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said that the next trillion dollars for Google will not come from any of the current technology trends we’re hearing about, i.e. metavers, crypto, or blockchain. Instead, in an interview with Bloomberg Television as described in this Fortune article, Pichai said the next trillion will come from its original, timeless product - internet search.  Assuming he means that the growth will be in the advertising revenue generated from search, he is probably right.  With companies like Facebook focused on the virtual possibilities of Web 3 and the metaverse, and with other billionaires focused on conquering space, the amount of information that will be generated will still require the most basic functions of search.  The mode may change, i.e. we may get more comfortable with voice search, but the basic function will not be going away any time soon.  

Google’s own approach to immersive computing and other emerging technology trends, has been investing further in AI and the underlying technologies that support “deeper cloud computing.” But let's not forget, Google took its own unsuccessful foray into virtual/augmented reality, for example Google Glasses, and those initiatives were transferred to a division that reports directly to Pichai.  What is unclear is if what they’ve learned from those experiences will influence their growth strategy.  However, it is very clear that they continue to rely heavily on revenues from search. Is it terrible that Google is so heavily reliant on this for their growth? Only time will tell. But it is obvious that the hype around immersive computing can have multiple iterations and may not require every company entering the space to monetize this trend through ugly headgear. 

Retailers To Rethink This Holiday Season

 

From the privacy changes with Apple to the ongoing controversy with Facebook ethics, consumer and moving away from Facebook apps.  As a result, many retailers need to reconsider and potentially change their marketing methods this holiday season. We can expect more catalogues, TV ads and celebrity sponsorships.

Many direct-to-consumer companies have built their businesses on Facebook, which is becoming an issue as these companies have to think of new ways to connect with customers.  More interestingly, companies are looking to brick-and-mortar stores to diversify their marketing mix.  Are retail stores back?

And while there is definitely a shift in the marketing spend mindset, another challenge for retailers is the supply chain disruption.  Companies will face the issue of meeting customer demand this holiday season.

Make It Look Google-y

In a small, but important, update in the world of Search, Google has revised their visual guidelines to suggest that logos uploaded to the schema looks appropriate on white backgrounds. This revision adds on to a number of other guidelines for properties that Google has communicated, such as size and file format type. The kicker with this revision is that if the logo does not display properly, it may not qualify for inclusion in search. This has obvious repercussions for brand value and identity and further forces marketers to go out of their way to make sure that things fit in the way Google would like them to. However, this change mainly affects logos that are mostly gray or white and I'd be willing to bet that most of the marketers at those companies are aware of this nuance and are prepared to handle adjustments on an as needed basis. Regardless, it's yet another example of the power of Google and how it forces companies and brands to conform/adjust to their standards. 

Sources: 

• https://searchengineland.com/google-logo-schema-markup-now-requires-logos-to-look-good-on-white-backgrounds-376170
• https://developers.google.com/search/docs/advanced/structured-data/logo#structured-data-type-definitions

Nike embraces the Metaverse...

 https://www.businessoffashion.com/news/news-analysis/nike-jumps-into-metaverse-with-virtual-world-on-roblox-platform

Just when we thought that the buzzword metaverse was a well-timed Media ploy by Facebook to divert attention away from the fracas caused by whistleblower revelations of a toxic company culture....

Turns out, veteran sports brand Nike has fully embraced this new digital world in a new partnership with video-gaming platform Roblox. Called "Nikeworld", the new digital sphere will allow players to engage in free games and - more importantly - outfit their players with the latest, exclusive Nike garb available on the Nikeworld website. Talk about Digital Marketing! Even if we all agree that putting a heavy headset on to join a metaverse world, the idea that you can interact with a sport of your choosing, and dress your player in cool gear that you yourself might never own or afford, is truly genius. 

But scary too... If we can now own digital products like Nike sneakers, where is the fun in the real-life thing?

Maybe in a digital game or two!

Email newsletter open rate

 https://pressgazette.co.uk/marketing-newsletter-experts-tips-on-improving-open-rates/

Recently, I have been doing some email newsletter marketing for OMAO. The first one has to do with the Nov. 1st NYC plastic straw ban. We sent out two email newsletters from NYC Hospitality Alliance, targeting NYC restaurant owners. As I was working with the people at NYC Hospitality Alliance, I learned that the average open rate of typical newsletters is about 15%. Obviously, given a certain size audience, the higher the open rate, the more effective our marketing would be. 

In this article, titled 'How to improve your newsletter open rate: Marketers share their insights'. The author talked about the following tips to increase open rate:

1. Must be better than paid content
2. Segmentation and automation
3. Content that solves readers problems
4. Ask a question with your subject line
5. Imagine you are writing to an individual
6. How to improve newsletter open rates: Send it from a person
7. More entertaining or informative content
8. Bold colours and designs can go a long way

R.I.P. Digital Advertising: Customer Acquisition Is Now A CX Game

 

                                       Image source - How to create a great customer experience | by Kyle Drewnowsky | Ablii | Medium

This article discusses that digital advertising should focus on the overall customer experience (CX) versus acquisition alone.  It suggests that a better approach to customer acquisition is finding ways help prospective customers move along the customer journey as a way to improve ROI and CLV. 

As we learned in class, customers tend not to respond to advertising campaigns that are intrusive or obnoxious. The article argues "more advertising, even better advertising, rarely results in more customers or revenue. But improving CX can." And states that focus solely on new customer acquisition is missing opportunities. CX is proving to be a far more effective growth strategy with significantly better ROI. 

This is a good point, however digital advertising is here to stay. It is designing the ads and ad campaigns effectively in order to draw customers in across the customer journey that makes the difference.

Article Source: R.I.P. Digital Advertising: Customer Acquisition Is Now A CX Game (forbes.com)

Don't Mock the Metaverse

The Economist argues that despite the ham-fisted launch of Meta and some of the mocking that ensued, we should be taking it seriously.  Something like the Metaverse is a natural extension of both sophistication in hardware, software, and artificial intelligence, and a three-dimensional internet is the logical next step from where we are now. They cite the examples of Everquest, World of Warcraft and now Roblox as three-dimensional locations in which people live and play - not so much work - but which have millions of users.

Meanwhile, Shaan Puri on argues on Twitter that we're thinking about Metaverse wrong - and we shouldn't be thinking about it as a place, but as a threshold in time that we are inexorably moving towards - where our digital lives are more important to us than our physical ones.  We are already cultivating our digital selves with filters, and with the introduction of phones our level of attention on the physical environment around us has dropped to 50%. Puri foresees a time when 90% of our attention is on screens and believes that that is when the Metaverse will truly exist.

The implications for digital marketing are of course enormous - with so much attention on screens, opportunities to respond to intent and interest are only going to multiply and accelerate. It is no surprise the Facebook is betting big on this, followed by Microsoft and nVidia - it is not 'weird' - it is simply about positioning their companies to be ready to capitalize on where the world is headed.

The question is how digital marketing will be welcomed in this new world. In class last week we heard from a speaker who offers value exchange advertising on mobile, who despaired at how poor marketing placements in virtual environments were being both executed and received. My personal favorite, Nine Inch Nail's nail-gun ammo box in Quake, has rarely been beaten, and it's now over 25 years old.

Rethinking Digital Ads for the Holidays

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/11/11/how-retailers-are-rethinking-their-approach-to-marketing-this-holiday.html

DTC companies (and companies heavily dependent on digital advertising) have certainly been on a roller coaster ride since the pandemic. We all saw firsthand how DTC companies blew up overnight as everyone sheltered at home and constantly scrolled through Facebook and Google. Major companies (airlines, hotels, etc.) also pulled back ad spend in particular on Facebook in a play to conserve cash which caused companies to score top advertising real estate online for a lot less money. Then came 2021 and post-vaccine as life slowly came back to a sense of "normalcy," rates started to creep back up and as noted in the article, CPMs continue to skyrocket tracking 50% increases to CPMs on Facebook with an additional 50% anticipated. Coupled with people spending less time on screen as the world continues to slowly open up - "An analysis by the market research company eMarketer found that users in the U.S. are expected to spend less time scrolling through Facebook this year and in the coming years. Time spent on the platform for adults over the age of 18 is expected to be down 3.3% in 2021 compared with 2020 levels, eMarketer said. It forecasts it will drop another 1.8% from 2021 to 2022, and fall another 0.7% in 2023." - means a double hit as cost increases and eyeballs decrease. Then, finally comes around Apple's privacy changes in April impacting how app track users and Meta facing scrutiny after a whistleblower, Frances Haugen, released a trove of damning documents, has caused many companies to pull out of digital altogether such as Patagonia. Other companies who continue to have a prevalent Facebook presence have seen their performance dovetail dramatically and coupled with Apple's privacy initiatives to the point that companies are beginning to think about their digital strategy which may be a complete opposite of the strategy one-year ago. Will be very interesting how this all shapes up as we head into the holidays!

Budgeting Apps

Thinking about what to write for the blog, a discussion that was going rounds in our EMBA WhatsApp group chat was which budgeting app is the best one to be used. A lot of apps were shared including one that had a New York Times article to back it up however for someone who is kind of old school in managing the budgets I saw some advantages and some disadvantages of using a Mobile Budget app and hence came the topic of my blog.

I want to lay down some pros and cons here for the Budgeting app but ultimately you must do what suits you best and is less risky especially when it comes to sharing your financial information. Diving into the pros of budgeting app the first one is the ease of set up. Signing up for a budgeting app is as simple as verifying your email address and linking your financial accounts. How many accounts you have will determine how quickly you’re set up and tracking your economic life. The second is accessibility, the online budget tool comes with a mobile app, so you’re never more than a few taps from checking your financial health. Apps like Mint, You Need a Budget, and Clarity Money in particular offer easy-to-use dashboards and mobile experiences. Setting long-term visible goals is another benefit of the budgeting app. Budgeting apps break down your overall net worth, debts, savings goals, and other metrics that let you know where you always stand. These details may seem like common sense, but plenty of user reviews of debt settlement services like Freedom Debt Relief would tell you otherwise.

On the other side, the cons include some major concerns like most budget apps offer the simplicity of integrating with all your financial accounts and consolidating your activity into one dashboard. However, to get accurate analytics and forecasts, you’ll probably need to do some tweaking. Mint, for example, promises to categorize your spending automatically. But unless their predefined categories work for your budget, you’ll have to create your own sections and review your monthly transactions to ensure they’re being labeled correctly. Also, A budget app can tell you how much you’re spending each month, how far over-budget you are, or your progress with savings goals but it won’t make decisions for you. If you can’t carry out the plan a budget app lays out, you might have more success with the cash-envelope budget. This method gives every dollar of monthly income a destination by putting cash in different spending envelopes. People are starting to realize that using free products carries drawbacks, namely the fact that if the product is free, the user is the product. This is no different with free financial apps, which usually serve a lot of ads and “personalized” recommendations for banking products and institutions advertising on the platform. Last but in my view most critical is the security risk. using online budget apps means one more account for a cybercriminal to hack potentially. This is less a reflection on the companies providing these apps and more in tune with the realization that cyberattacks cannot be prevented, they can only be minimized. That’s why if you do use an online budget, make sure to use a secure password manager to store your login.

At the end of the day, budget apps will be as effective as the person using them. If you need an accessible system that’s easy to use and gives clarity over your situation, then a budget app will probably do wonders for you. But if you’re looking for an app to solve your mindset, never need any fine-tuning and pose no security risks or data sharing.

More advanced sales techniques are coming to mobile gaming

In the past few years, mobile gaming sales tactic has become a lot more sophisticated. It used to just be a simple pop-up asking if you have interest in purchasing things that you need at a discounted price. Nowadays, the CRM tools can fire specific pop-ups to people based on their demographic data or more likely some very specific behaviors done in the game. For example, if the game data shows that a player plays a lot more of a certain game mode, it will fire a discounted sales bundle for resources particularly targeted for playing that specific game mode. Payer / non-payer targeting would be another big one.

There are also a lot of innovations happening in the sales design. One example is that similar to retail, there is usually a "hangover" effect after a big sales of virtual currency - meaning that payers won't buy for quite sometime since the virtual currency gain from the sales will last them for a while. Sometimes, we don't even know whether doing sales would be more beneficial compared to not doing sales since the "hangover" from sales might outweigh the gain. One new technique to combat this problem is to show the players that the discount they get depends on how much currency they currently have. For example, if they have 0 currency, they will have the biggest discount. Doing it this way has the potential to significantly reduce the accumulation of currency after purchase to very effectively reduce the "hangover" effect.

Apple v. Amazon, what?

Actually, its not that big a surprise. I wanted to learn more about how was been negatively affected by Apple's privacy changes versus who might actually benefit (or, as is often the case with regulatory changes, who is least affected). 

It turns out Amazon wins out - AGAIN. The reason is simple, it relies on its warehoused data. But even further, Amazon is utilizing (or aligning) two clients through its market place: willing buyers and eager sellers. And like a true exchange earns via facilitation. 

Contrast this to Facebook or Snap, et al social media networks, where the "service" is free but the product is the monetization of client data. These company's, as has been amply covered in the media, are far more reliant on iOS for tracking, especially across apps. 

Another potential winner by reduction, i.e., weaker competition from social media networks, is Google. Their platform has both targeted and more generalized ads AND obviously a rich dataset from its inhouse products which are often utilized by its users on PCs, i.e., not affected by iOS changes. 

Finally, Apple is a winner. Reputation seems much more important than being seen as catering to the likes of Facebook. This is a great move by company who derives most of its revenue from its outstanding portfolio of B2C products.

https://www.reuters.com/technology/amazon-seen-triumphing-over-apple-privacy-changes-digital-ad-business-2021-10-27/