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How brands can seize the shoppable media opportunity

The convergence of commerce and storytelling is driving the creation of a new advertising opportunity: shoppable media. A new WARC Guide outlines how marketers can take advantage of the rise of shoppable ad formats.

The WARC Guide to Shoppable Media*

Media owners are investing in tools to allow brands to catalogue and promote products on their platforms, with the aim of enabling users to complete a purchase without having to leave the app or website. Shoppable content can include static images or livestream videos, often hosted by influencers, and formats are also being trialled in TV and audio.

Six takeaways

1: Online shopping is becoming a form of entertainment. Where e-commerce was previously utilitarian, users are growing accustomed to more immersive and interactive experiences.

2: Social media has offered a digital ‘store front’ during COVID-19. With consumers unable to visit physical retail outlets, social platforms have helped brands to maintain visibility.

3: Livestream video is a key driver of shoppable media growth. Following its rise in popularity in China over the last few years, media owners are introducing in-app shoppable livestream events.

4: Shoppable media requires a new approach to media planning. Social commerce campaigns must blend storytelling with the information likely to trigger an immediate conversion.

5: Influencers are vital to shoppable media success, but their role is becoming more ambiguous. The arrival of influencers’ own branded product ranges may complicate advertiser relationships.

6: Shoppable media works best in categories like fashion and beauty. These benefit from a sweet spot of high levels of buyer engagement and accessible pricing.

* Readers can sign up to a WARC Talks webinar in which contributors from Isobar Commerce advise how shoppable media can be integrated into an omnichannel strategy.

Tokyo Summer Olympics may exclude foreign fans

There is speculation that overseas sports fans may not be allowed to attend the Summer Olympic Games in Tokyo later this year, amid widespread Japanese concerns about the safety of the event due to COVID-19.

As reported by the Guardian, Seiko Hashimoto, the new president of the Tokyo Olympic organising committee, confirmed that the potential involvement of spectators formed a key part of talks last week with Thomas Bach, president of the International Olympic Committee.

Andrew Parsons, the International Paralympic Committee president, also attended the meeting along with Tokyo governor Yuriko Koike and the Japanese Olympic minister, Tamayo Marukawa.

Key coverage

• “If the situation is tough and it would make the [Japanese] consumers concerned, that is a situation we need to avoid from happening,” Hashimoto is reported to have said.
• “We will focus on the essentials,” added IOC president Thomas Bach at last week’s virtual meeting.
• Their comments coincided with a report in Japanese newspaper Mainichi, which suggested Olympic officials have already made up their minds even though a final announcement is not expected until later this month.
• The Mainichi report quoted a government source saying: “In the current situation it is impossible to bring in foreign spectators.”
• Clearly, a Summer Games that does not include foreign spectators would have implications for broadcasters, sponsors and advertisers.

Key quote

“We need to look at the overall situation before we decide on any percentage rates. We believe we will not be accepted unless the citizens feel confident that sufficient countermeasures are taken” – Seiko Hashimoto, president of the Tokyo Olympic organising committee.

Amazon seeks exclusive $1bn NFL streaming deal

Amazon, the retail and media giant, is reportedly in talks with the National Football League (NFL) about securing an entire season of exclusive games that would be streamed on the Amazon Prime video platform.

First reported by the Wall Street Journal, which cited ‘people familiar with the matter’, Amazon could pay up to $1 billion to win the right to broadcast a significant number of Thursday night games – and those games may not become available on traditional television outside of the local markets of the two participating teams.

The details

• If a deal is reached, which could happen as early as this week, it would mark the NFL’s most significant foray into streaming to date, according to the Journal’s sources.
• Any such deal would not commence until after the 2022 season, when Fox’s current rights to Thursday night football expires, and it might also have to include the NFL Network.
• Amazon could pay up to $1 billion to secure Thursday night games, as long as there is no other video component beyond the local TV markets of the two participating teams. The package would be worth significantly more than the $660 million a season that Fox currently pays.
• However, the NFL may conclude that maintaining NFL Network’s value is a higher strategic priority than handing over the rights to Thursday night games to Amazon.
• According to CNBC, the league is still considering proposals to simulcast Amazon’s Thursday games on the NFL Network or to split Thursday’s games between Amazon and the NFL Network.
• That’s because the NFL is trying to strike a balance between embracing new platforms and the revenue they generate, while keeping most of its games on traditional television.

Key quote

“This is a pretty watershed event for the TV industry. The fact that now you can get Thursday night games without having any local television – no antenna will work if you’re outside of the home markets” – Rich Greenfield, partner and media analyst at LightShed Partners.

Disney’s online ad revenue jumped 47% in the last quarter

Advertising revenue at Walt Disney’s online channels, such as Hulu and ESPN+, are on course to surpass its ABC broadcast network, according to a company filing.

Seen by Bloomberg, Disney reported that ad sales at its direct-to-consumer businesses rose 47% to $882m in the last quarter, compared with 5% growth to $984m at ABC.

Key insights

Walt Disney is benefitting from surging demand for streamed TV. At the same time, the company has consolidated its ad-sales team to provide a ‘one-stop shop’ for advertisers across its various networks and platforms.

It means that marketers, using technology pioneered at Hulu, can buy ads themselves and make use of Disney’s viewership data.

The company estimates that, within five years, as much as half of Disney’s online and traditional advertising inventory could be purchased this way.

Hulu now has more than 39 million subscribers and research firm eMarketer expects the service to generate around $3bn in ad sales this year, up 31% from 2020.

Key quote

“Disney, inclusive of Hulu, has proven to be a strong, strategic partner that understands our business, our consumers and how to engage them with compelling content” – Rebecca Traverzo, VP of marketing at ThirdLove, a lingerie firm which worked with Hulu on a campaign last year.

Sourced from Bloomberg

Will FLoC excise tracking from the web?

With the news that Google is to move away from individual-level identifiers for advertising in a post-cookie world, questions of what will replace them are bubbling over.

Why it matters

Ultimately, the cookie was one of the aspects of the internet (and, by extension, digital advertising) that gave it a bad name. But at least they were everyone’s problem/opportunity – what comes next could lead to a vast concentration of power.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation take

The EFF, a major non-profit that focuses on civil liberties in the digital world, eyes Google’s proposed changes with scepticism.

“The goal of FLoC and other proposals is to avoid letting trackers access specific pieces of information that they can tie to specific people,” writes technologist Bennett Cyphers in a new piece. But “FLoC may actually help trackers in many contexts”.

Its argument is that the replacement, FLoCs – which uses machine learning to form groups large clusters of people with similar browsing habits and serves ads to all of them – is simply a modern, even more centralised version of tracking.

It identifies two continued privacy problems with FLoCs:

• Fingerprinting (gathering lots of different data from a browser to create a unique, stable identifier) which is given a large head-start by the FLoC.
• “Any company able to identify a user in other ways – say, by offering “log in with Google” services to sites around the Internet – will be able to tie the information it learns from FLoC to the user’s profile.”
  

Meanwhile, as Campaign Asia pointed out, the announcement that Google wouldn’t be taking part in identifiers had a strong knock-on effect on other industry efforts to move beyond cookies, drawing accusations that the move was an attempt to undermine confidence in other initiatives.

Sourced from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Campaign Asia, WARC

Three-quarters of sellers use Amazon pay-per-click advertising

Advertising on Amazon is becoming a requirement for e-commerce success and research from seller platform Jungle Scout shows that three-quarters (75%) of Amazon sellers use the platform's pay-per-click (PPC) advertising tools.

Why it matters

Audiences often start their shopping journey on Amazon so brands are increasingly relying on advertising in order to capture consumer attention. The Sponsored Products format proves most popular, being used by two-thirds (66%) of sellers.

This powered Amazon's advertising revenue to over $20bn last year, doubling its share of the online ad market.

Takeaways

• The majority of conversions from the Sponsored Brands format comes on the first search results page, meaning advertisers often pay more for this placement.
• Rising advertising costs are a concern, though, according to three-fifths (62%) of sellers.

Sourced from Jungle Scout, WARC Data

Twitch finally reveals safeguarding measures, allaying brand fears

Twitch, the Amazon-owned streaming platform, has, for the first time, published  a report detailing its efforts to protect the millions of people who visit the platform each day.

Context

The platform, which mainly focuses on video game live streaming, has seen explosive growth – a 40% rise in channels in 2020, and it speaks to a valuable audience for brands. But it has also attracted criticism over efforts to stamp out hateful conduct, sexual harassment, and predators. A 2019 study found almost half of Twitch users surveyed had faced some kind of harassment.

The details

• The company’s Transparency Report says its AI-powered AutoMod tool, which blocks inappropriate content, or moderators, looked at more than 95% of platform content during the second half of 2020.
• Manual deletion of messages by creators and moderators was up 98% relative to the first half of the year, which the company attributes to the 40% increase in channels between the two halves of the year.
• Total enforcements were up 41% during the year, dealing with a wide range of categories including hateful conduct, sexual harassment, violence and gore, nudity, and even terrorist propaganda, which Twitch says is very rare.

The challenge

“Because content is viewed as it is created, live-streaming provides a particularly challenging environment for machine detection to keep up. Nevertheless, we have found ways to use machine detection to bolster proactive moderation on Twitch, and we will continue to invest in these technologies to improve them” – Twitch Transparency Report 2020.

Sourced from Twitch

Daily Mail owner snaps up New Scientist, seeking sustainable revenues

The owner of the UK’s Daily Mail newspaper has bought New Scientist, one of the world’s most prestigious science and tech magazines, for £70m as it looks for sustainable growth through events and subscriptions.

The move by Daily Mail and General Trust (DMGT) comes as it continues to restructure its business, which is a mix of news titles, events and data businesses. As with other publishers, DMGT’s advertising revenue has been hit hard during the pandemic, with pre-tax profits down by more than a third. 

The context

• London-based New Scientist relies heavily on subscriptions rather than advertising – around 75% of its revenue is derived from subs. It has a weekly circulation of around 120,000.
• The title is forecast to generate profits of around £7m this year on sales of over £20m.
• Around 50% of readers are in the UK, with most of the rest in Australia and the US.

Key takeway

DMGT sees growth in New Scientist’s online offering as well as its events business, which includes the highly successful annual New Scientist Live festival that attracts tens of thousands of science fans.

Sourced from the Financial Times

The Times of India advises brands to seek collaboration on social activism

Over the years, The Times of India – the country’s leading newspaper – has been at the forefront of brand activism by raising pertinent issues with campaigns like Teach India and Aman Ki Asha.  Such activism comes easier to a newspaper, says a senior executive; non-media brands may find it useful to work with partners. 

Insights

• Brand activism is not only about creating good-looking communication but is backed by brand purpose with intent and action.
• Consumers expect brands to drive social or environmental agendas but it is easy to catch those that are merely offering lip service.
• Causes raised by brands need to be relevant and not appear opportunistic; collaborating with relevant stakeholders will help tackle the issues more effectively.

Key quote

“It can be a collaborative effort. It would be wise for brands to collaborate with relevant stakeholders and see what is the best way forward” – Malcolm Raphael, senior vice-president and head – trade marketing, innovations, creative strategy, Times of India.

Digital innovation boosts China’s Pinduoduo during pandemic

Chinese e-commerce giant Pinduoduo (PDD) has doubled the gross merchandise value (GMV) of its agriculture business in just a year after launching digital initiatives aimed at helping farmers and rural businesses who were most affected by the coronavirus pandemic.

According to Pandaily, the Nasdaq-listed company secured GMV worth 270bn yuan (US$42bn) from the agriculture sector in 2020, up from 134bn yuan in 2019.

Digital initiatives

• Lockdown regulations encouraged more consumers to embrace digital agricultural services and many turned to PDD’s “Help the Farmers” channel to promote sales of fresh farm produce from heavily affected areas.
• PDD launched Duo Duo Grocery, a next-day pick-up service, in August 2020, enabling farmers to sell directly to local consumers in a more cost-effective way than premium same-day delivery services.
• After raising $6.2bn in November 2020, PDD invested heavily in a logistics network to handle perishable goods. The company is also exploring global opportunities in areas such as food safety, alternative proteins and precision farming.

Key quote

“Agricultural produce is our bread and butter and we will continue to make groceries affordable and available to everyone whenever they want. Digital agriculture increases the efficiency of food supply chains and ensures food quality at the same time” – Chen Lei, CEO of Pinduoduo.

Sourced from Pandaily

_{[Image: Pinduoduo]}

New Muji stores will focus on expanding grocery sales

Japanese retailer Ryohin Keikaku plans to expand its grocery business significantly by dedicating almost a third (30%) of space at its new Muji stores to high-end food and drinks.

It comes after the company witnessed 60% growth in food sales at the end of last year, driven by more people being required to work from home because of COVID-19. Ryohin Keikaku expects this consumer trend to continue even after the pandemic ends, reported Nikkei Asia.

The details

• Ryohin Keikaku plans to open 50 new Muji stores by August 2022 with half of them located in major supermarkets, such as Ito-Yokado.
• About 30% of retail space will be given over to environmentally friendly and high-end groceries, including fresh baked bread, bento boxes ‘of the day’ and locally sourced fruit and vegetables.
• The emphasis on quality will come with higher prices and the company plans to focus on rural areas rather than city centres.
• It is expected that a wider range of food and drink products will encourage more frequent visits per customer, who then may also spend more on clothing and other non-food products.

Influencers use shoppable media to launch DTC brands

The arrival of shoppable ad formats on social platforms is providing influencers with new ways to monetise their audiences beyond partnerships with third-party brands; marketers need to be aware of the implications, says Kaho Yamada, Head of Influencer Marketing, Japan, at AnyMind Group.

Why it matters

Influencers are central to marketing on social media platforms. However, relationships with brands may become more ambiguous if influencers opt to begin the sale of their own branded products.

What does this mean for brands?

• While influencer selection is currently based on past collaboration, follower data and brand affinity, it may soon need to take an influencer’s own brand and products into consideration.
• Brands may benefit from this change, with audiences becoming more accustomed to shoppable content and knowledgeable about the types of product their favourite influencers might promote.
• However, marketers should beware any potential disparity in shopping experience – for instance, own-brand product purchase benefitting from seamless UX, but advertiser brands only being made available via multiple clicks.

An example

Thai social media influencer MayyR used Instagram to announce the launch of her own brand, 11AM, including a café and apparel range, populating her feed with posts about the brand amidst a posts about collaborations with other brands.

Google says it won’t follow users around the web post-cookie

Google will not build alternative identifiers to track individuals as they browse around the web once third-party cookies are phased out, it has announced.

“People shouldn’t have to accept being tracked across the web in order to get the benefits of relevant advertising”, writes David Temkin, Director of Product Management, Ads Privacy and Trust, in a new blog post.

What's going on

 Google, it is working on a suite of privacy-preserving APIs that can prevent individual-level tracking, part of its Privacy Sandbox initiative. These are, according to its own tests, very effective but behind that effectiveness is a giant company whose market share in digital advertising is already extremely high and regulators around the world have pointed out that Google’s post-cookie plans could strengthen its position even further.

To this end, Temkin says the firm is aware that “other providers may offer a level of user identity for ad tracking across the web that we will not — like PII graphs based on people’s email addresses”, but Google believes consumers expectations of privacy will only grow.

These changes are coming soon

• “Chrome intends to make FLoC-based cohorts available for public testing through origin trials with its next release this month, and we expect to begin testing FLoC-based cohorts with advertisers in Google Ads in Q2”, the blog continues.
• By April, it will also put out the first iteration of new user controls. These have the potential to be quite revolutionary, if nothing else because those interested will gain visibility of their data’s usage for ads, as Android police showed in their recent teardown of the latest Chrome Beta (89).

Now is time to take stock

Lots of solutions will be proposed by ad tech vendors, as Jack Shearring, MD at LEAD Digital Consulting, points out in a recent WARC Exclusive. Google’s power means there are yet hurdles, so the best thing marketers can do now is to assess what data they have, what processes rely on cookies, and understand the market. Remember: if a vendor’s offer is too good to be true, it usually is.

Sourced from Google, Android Police, WARC

Airbnb cuts performance marketing by $541m

Airbnb cut its performance marketing by $540.5m last year and is shifting its strategy to be PR- and brand-focused, according to the latest company reports.

Why it matters

The online travel platform was affected heavily by the coronavirus outbreak and its recovery has been driven by organic traffic and the strength of the brand. The company says that 95% of traffic to its web properties had returned after the initial COVID-19 drop and this was without any marketing spend.

Takeaways

• Advertising spend ($176m) was just 5.2% of total revenue last year, a share that is expected to remain low in the future.
• Airbnb has seen success with partnerships that provide new experiences, including with Barbie, the Louvre and genetic testing company 23andMe.

Sourced from company reports, WARC Data

Tapping Vice’s trust halo

Vice Media Group has built a rapport with its consumers that global CMO Nadja Bellan-White says can not only help brands regain trust with their consumers but also guide them through an uncertain future.

Why it matters

The brand trust crisis may be exaggerated but there is an issue for brands to address as trust can be as important as price in a purchase decision. Speaking at Lions Live, Bellan-White set out the factors that have contributed to Vice’s “legacy of trust”. 

• Listening: “We have the ability to really listen to what people both young and old are saying.”
• Authenticity: “We give a platform to those who perhaps have not always had a voice, and sometimes what we end up portraying to people is a truth that they don’t want to see.” 
• Data: “How data is used to help drive culture and growth and brands is going to be critical. It’s seeing beyond the numbers on the page, it's seeing behaviors and patterns and how those form trends that partners are looking for.”

Key quote

“Our agenda is the agenda of the consumer, our agenda is the agenda of truth, and [when] we’re working with partners, our agenda is simply telling them what we see and what we hear. You may not like how your brand is perceived, but we’re not going to sugarcoat that information for you. We’re going to give you the real perspective” – Nadja Bellan-White, global CMO, Vice Media Group.

The story behind Tata Tea's “wake up” call to highlight national issues

The Jaago Re cause marketing initiative by Tata Tea has helped the Indian brand to stay relevant by championing political and social causes. Tata Consumer Products’ Puneet Das tells WARC how standing up for a cause must go beyond just communicating it in order to be meaningful.

Insights

• Understand the issues through social listening and focus on what you as a company and individual can do about a cause relevant to your brand’s purpose.
• With many asking brands what they stand for and how they are making society better, brands need think about what they say to their consumers.
• Consumers’ connection with a brand becomes stronger when they understand the brand’s philosophy, regardless of brand stature.

Key quote

“A lot of this is not from a marketing point of view because it’s not a marketing campaign but a genuine social campaign” – Puneet Das, senior vice-president, marketing – beverages, Tata Consumer Products.

Structural factors have greatest influence on ROI

Long-term, structural factors like brand size and budget account for over half of advertising's return on investment (ROI), according to research from Nielsen.

Why it matters

Advertisers need to recognise that long-term factors play a major role in ROI and that the relative importance of short-term factors differs across categories.

Short-term creative factors like duration and copy quality influences just 13% of ROI across the 11 categories analysed. However, this rises to 20% in the tech & comms and retail categories.

Takeaways

• Short-term media factors like reach and daypart are most influential for advertisers in the food, cosmetics & beauty and beverages categories.
• The WARC Awards for Effectiveness is a new global competition showing how marketing delivers business results – entries are now open.

Sourced from Nielsen, WARC Data