Tag: ecommerce

Bricks and mortar stores are shutting at pace. What does it mean for eCommerce in the UK, and how is branded content a part of the mix? We have already seen the effects of consumers tightening their spending, resulting in the downfall of major names on the high street. Can social save the shops?

One of the primary reasons that many high street brands are struggling is due to a failure for bricks-and-mortar retail to keep up with digital expectations. Drab web design and questionable user experiences turned consumers off, and on to other more developed ecommerce propositions, such as Amazon. It’s, sometimes, about more than just price – it’s also about immediacy, seamlessness and simplicity.

So as users increasingly turn to the digital to make purchases of physical items, how can retailers adapt to survive? It’s increasingly less about your core website and more about being present at the perfect purchase moment. In 2019 Instagram will become a shopping platform in itself, with the introduction of a native credit card payment system. Browsing #ootd just became so much more dangerous.

Facebook will be implementing new AR ads, allowing users to virtually try out new products (such as makeup and sunglasses).

And WhatsApp is creating a business platform which will enable brands to respond to customers within 24-hours. In some countries, WhatsApp is already a common form of communication between retailers and consumers.

What does this mean for a waning high street? Brands can learn from the likes of IKEA, Amazon and Alibaba, which have transcended from online to offline experiential stores, designed not to aggressively push sales and stack up products, but to allow people to get hands on and experiment with the brands’ products. This experience encourages consumers to make their purchases online. The tactile high street shop may not quite be dead yet, resuscitated by evolving digital experiences.

Bricks and mortar stores are shutting at pace. What does it mean for eCommerce in the UK, and how is branded content a part of the mix? We have already seen the effects of consumers tightening their spending, resulting in the downfall of major names on the high street. Can social save the shops?

One of the primary reasons that many high street brands are struggling is due to a failure for bricks-and-mortar retail to keep up with digital expectations. Drab web design and questionable user experiences turned consumers off, and on to other more developed ecommerce propositions, such as Amazon. It’s, sometimes, about more than just price – it’s also about immediacy, seamlessness and simplicity.

So as users increasingly turn to the digital to make purchases of physical items, how can retailers adapt to survive? It’s increasingly less about your core website and more about being present at the perfect purchase moment. In 2019 Instagram will become a shopping platform in itself, with the introduction of a native credit card payment system. Browsing #ootd just became so much more dangerous.

Facebook will be implementing new AR ads, allowing users to virtually try out new products (such as makeup and sunglasses).

And WhatsApp is creating a business platform which will enable brands to respond to customers within 24-hours. In some countries, WhatsApp is already a common form of communication between retailers and consumers.

What does this mean for a waning high street? Brands can learn from the likes of IKEA, Amazon and Alibaba, which have transcended from online to offline experiential stores, designed not to aggressively push sales and stack up products, but to allow people to get hands on and experiment with the brands’ products. This experience encourages consumers to make their purchases online. The tactile high street shop may not quite be dead yet, resuscitated by evolving digital experiences.

We sent Piers Drake, our Head of eCommerce, and Chelsea Horncastle, our Senior Product Innovation Manager and AI/AR specialist, to Cologne to check-out DMEXCO 2018. Here they discuss what they found:

Piers Drake: So, Chelsea, that was a busy couple of days; my Fitbit tells me we covered 15miles lapping the halls of the Koelnmesse! Other than aching feet, the overall theme that jumped out for me was one of retrenching in these post-GDPR times. ‘Take CARE’ was the DMEXCO tag line, and every other booth had the words ‘Safety’ and ‘Transparency’ written large on their displays, with a somewhat apologetic tone!

Chelsea Horncastle:  On top of which the keynotes were frequently referencing the disruption of data, gender inequality and the bleak outlook for retail! Quite negative thematically, but the atmosphere was actually very optimistic and buzzy, particularly when it came to the application of newer tech to consumer problems. And the halls were absolutely packed!

PD: Definitely. This was a transitional year for the industry I think. For me personally, the most interesting and positive stuff was when we dug below the surface and asked the exhibitors what they had coming down the pipeline for 2019. I think we found the seeds of some very cool tech and new approaches, but these weren’t always obvious from browsing the displays.

CH: The narrative that kept coming up with vendors, Google and AWS for example, was getting the appropriate infrastructure in place now to take advantage of the vast amounts of data – video, images, and more – already being collected. Also making voice and visual search technology more accessible, and using it to free up people’s time rather than for it’s own sake. I think the story of the next 12 months will be baby steps around implementation of these technologies at scale.

PD:  One exhibitor that brought this to life for me was Oath, who were demoing their AR content via Ryot Studio and HoloLens. Beyond the novelty of playing with virtual Smurfs (!), crucially they were talking confidently about the need to unite the content and publishing with an ‘insights engine’ of data in the background; what I’d call an end-to-end approach.

CH: Yep. The tech is impressive, but we need to move beyond the ‘cool technology’ angle and take it back to consumer insights – what are our goals with using these new formats and how do they help real consumers? And, AI can generate insights from big datasets, which is one of the most actionable ‘today’ applications.

PD: Thinking real-world applications, I was excited by the computer vision and ‘visual search’ tools we saw from Google, Microsoft and a number of startups. The Google Lens demo was particularly good because they were emphasising the practical uses, for example where you can identify plants or shoes or paintings with a tap, but then the UI drives you directly to other Google tools such as Shopping, Maps or Translate for the next steps. It’s going to be a great timesaver AND drive business results.

CH: Google Lens is great! On the B2B side, we saw Microsoft analysing the faces of people walking past their stand and estimating their genders, ages and moods – all in real time. This kind of real time analysis of video is a potential gamechanger for lots of industries, retail in particular.

PD: Yes, let’s talk retail! eCommerce vendors were dotted around the show and my main takeaway was that online retail is no longer an awkward cousin of digital! Everybody is talking about commerce outcomes, trying to explicitly link investment to sales (at last!)

CH: Ha! eCommerce seems much more mainstream this year and I heard a lot about AI-led personalisation. Salesforce were talking about ‘Shoptimism’ and the benefits of AI-driven recommendations on online stores, with their data showing a 5x transaction value from that.

PD: Whether it’s via human curation, AI or a hybrid – recommendations and personalised experiences are a key area where rivals can offer something different to Amazon. They had a sizeable presence at the show but were characteristically reluctant to discuss their plans. The explosive growth of their Amazon Advertising platform was a frequent topic of conversation with third party tool providers like Kenshoo, who told me that Amazon Search is growing at 10x the rate of Google Search.

CH: From my side, I was surprised that Alexa was invisible among the other AI assistant demos on show. Meanwhile, you said eBay had some interesting ideas when you spoke to them?

PD: I think eBay is one to watch as they are launching new tools and trying to shift perceptions of it as a ‘second hand’ eCommerce platform – their data is that over 80% of product sold is brand new. They already have an upper-funnel proposition and potentially it could evolve into a brand-friendly ‘end-to-end’ platform that offers more control over the shopping experience than Amazon.

CH: Let’s talk social for a moment. Facebook, LinkedIn and Snapchat were all there. Snapchat was the most low-key of these, mainly letting the product do the talking. Facebook were primarily featuring Instagram and Blueprint, showing some neat upgrades to IG Stories with more animation and motion.

PD: Social was a little low-key all round. I was surprised by the lack of messaging platforms around DMEXCO given the predictions of how ‘conversational UI’ was going to be big by now. And social commerce was invisible. We’re out of time unfortunately, so what was your highlight overall?

CH: Overall, it was a demo that sparked my imagination. That is the best part of attending conferences like Dmexco. This demo used image recognition to create a connected car experience, where it could understand what people see as they drive past buildings giving additional information or actions as needed. The idea is still very new, but it allows us to think about what the future could look like. And, yours?

PD: It’s slightly off-the-wall, but one of the most crowded and best-looking stands was a replica of a general store with tins, bottles and bags of pasta on display, with ‘shopkeepers.’ The popularity of it really captured for me why the eCommerce story is becoming about joining online up with physical retail – because despite all the info available online, people love browsing real shops….and going to trade shows like DMEXCO!

We sent Piers Drake, our Head of eCommerce, and Chelsea Horncastle, our Senior Product Innovation Manager and AI/AR specialist, to Cologne to check-out DMEXCO 2018. Here they discuss what they found:

Piers Drake: So, Chelsea, that was a busy couple of days; my Fitbit tells me we covered 15miles lapping the halls of the Koelnmesse! Other than aching feet, the overall theme that jumped out for me was one of retrenching in these post-GDPR times. ‘Take CARE’ was the DMEXCO tag line, and every other booth had the words ‘Safety’ and ‘Transparency’ written large on their displays, with a somewhat apologetic tone!

Chelsea Horncastle:  On top of which the keynotes were frequently referencing the disruption of data, gender inequality and the bleak outlook for retail! Quite negative thematically, but the atmosphere was actually very optimistic and buzzy, particularly when it came to the application of newer tech to consumer problems. And the halls were absolutely packed!

PD: Definitely. This was a transitional year for the industry I think. For me personally, the most interesting and positive stuff was when we dug below the surface and asked the exhibitors what they had coming down the pipeline for 2019. I think we found the seeds of some very cool tech and new approaches, but these weren’t always obvious from browsing the displays.

CH: The narrative that kept coming up with vendors, Google and AWS for example, was getting the appropriate infrastructure in place now to take advantage of the vast amounts of data – video, images, and more – already being collected. Also making voice and visual search technology more accessible, and using it to free up people’s time rather than for it’s own sake. I think the story of the next 12 months will be baby steps around implementation of these technologies at scale.

PD:  One exhibitor that brought this to life for me was Oath, who were demoing their AR content via Ryot Studio and HoloLens. Beyond the novelty of playing with virtual Smurfs (!), crucially they were talking confidently about the need to unite the content and publishing with an ‘insights engine’ of data in the background; what I’d call an end-to-end approach.

CH: Yep. The tech is impressive, but we need to move beyond the ‘cool technology’ angle and take it back to consumer insights – what are our goals with using these new formats and how do they help real consumers? And, AI can generate insights from big datasets, which is one of the most actionable ‘today’ applications.

PD: Thinking real-world applications, I was excited by the computer vision and ‘visual search’ tools we saw from Google, Microsoft and a number of startups. The Google Lens demo was particularly good because they were emphasising the practical uses, for example where you can identify plants or shoes or paintings with a tap, but then the UI drives you directly to other Google tools such as Shopping, Maps or Translate for the next steps. It’s going to be a great timesaver AND drive business results.

CH: Google Lens is great! On the B2B side, we saw Microsoft analysing the faces of people walking past their stand and estimating their genders, ages and moods – all in real time. This kind of real time analysis of video is a potential gamechanger for lots of industries, retail in particular.

PD: Yes, let’s talk retail! eCommerce vendors were dotted around the show and my main takeaway was that online retail is no longer an awkward cousin of digital! Everybody is talking about commerce outcomes, trying to explicitly link investment to sales (at last!)

CH: Ha! eCommerce seems much more mainstream this year and I heard a lot about AI-led personalisation. Salesforce were talking about ‘Shoptimism’ and the benefits of AI-driven recommendations on online stores, with their data showing a 5x transaction value from that.

PD: Whether it’s via human curation, AI or a hybrid – recommendations and personalised experiences are a key area where rivals can offer something different to Amazon. They had a sizeable presence at the show but were characteristically reluctant to discuss their plans. The explosive growth of their Amazon Advertising platform was a frequent topic of conversation with third party tool providers like Kenshoo, who told me that Amazon Search is growing at 10x the rate of Google Search.

CH: From my side, I was surprised that Alexa was invisible among the other AI assistant demos on show. Meanwhile, you said eBay had some interesting ideas when you spoke to them?

PD: I think eBay is one to watch as they are launching new tools and trying to shift perceptions of it as a ‘second hand’ eCommerce platform – their data is that over 80% of product sold is brand new. They already have an upper-funnel proposition and potentially it could evolve into a brand-friendly ‘end-to-end’ platform that offers more control over the shopping experience than Amazon.

CH: Let’s talk social for a moment. Facebook, LinkedIn and Snapchat were all there. Snapchat was the most low-key of these, mainly letting the product do the talking. Facebook were primarily featuring Instagram and Blueprint, showing some neat upgrades to IG Stories with more animation and motion.

PD: Social was a little low-key all round. I was surprised by the lack of messaging platforms around DMEXCO given the predictions of how ‘conversational UI’ was going to be big by now. And social commerce was invisible. We’re out of time unfortunately, so what was your highlight overall?

CH: Overall, it was a demo that sparked my imagination. That is the best part of attending conferences like Dmexco. This demo used image recognition to create a connected car experience, where it could understand what people see as they drive past buildings giving additional information or actions as needed. The idea is still very new, but it allows us to think about what the future could look like. And, yours?

PD: It’s slightly off-the-wall, but one of the most crowded and best-looking stands was a replica of a general store with tins, bottles and bags of pasta on display, with ‘shopkeepers.’ The popularity of it really captured for me why the eCommerce story is becoming about joining online up with physical retail – because despite all the info available online, people love browsing real shops….and going to trade shows like DMEXCO!

With September upon us, it means it’s time for DMEXCO again. Starting in 2009, this will mark the 10^th year for the digital marketing and advertising annual trade fair and conference held in Cologne, Germany. With over 1,100 exhibitors from 39 different countries, 100,000 sqm of expo space and over 570 speakers, there is a lot to cover in only two days.

Don’t worry, though, we will be tweeting key takeaways throughout the event @OMD_EMEA.

So, as we prepare to attend, we have had a thorough look at what will be presented at DMEXCO 2018. The big themes this year are artificial intelligence (conversational and image recognition in particular), eCommerce, immersive experiences (VR, AR, MR) and blockchain. These technologies offer exciting new opportunities, changing the dynamics of how brands and people interact.

Enhancing brand interactions.

The adoption of voice assistants, immersive experiences and image recognition technologies are fuelling increased consumer expectations. 72% of customers expect companies to understand their unique needs and 66% are likely to switch brands if they feel treated like a number not an individual. But, they also offer brands opportunities to create completely new experiences to delight and engage with their consumers. Industry leaders and brands alike will discuss how these technologies have empowered consumers (Age of the Costumer) and what adoption means for brands from new search behaviours (Voice-First – How Voice Affects your Future Brand) to messaging as a media channel (The Power of Messaging as a Marketing Channel).

Powering agile commerce.

Ways in which digital retail and eCommerce are shifting the landscape for brands will be a key theme of DMEXCO. Speakers from the likes of Amazon and eBay will share how the worlds of retail sales and marketing have collided, opening up new opportunities to fully connect-up digital businesses across media and commerce. Additionally video, transportation and blockchain are changing shopping behaviours in new ways. Creating a ‘sticky’ consumer experience that balances consistency with personalisation is key – another topic that will be explored.

Driving disruption.

We are only at the beginning of understanding how these technologies are going to transform everything from the way we work to how we shop or spend our free time. We will be exploring different exhibitors, from those preparing for connected-vehicle experiences to others pushing the boundaries of interactive advertising, and points of view from around the world.

Stay tuned. Follow us on Twitter for live updates.

We can all feel how the search landscape is changing. Every day I hear a new stat – 50% of search in 2020 will be voice, search queries are getting longer with 50% now over four words, and using an image within search results increases the likelihood of conversion by up to 40%. I could go on.

Search is the primary indicator of changing consumer behaviour. It is estimated that people today interact with up to 200 digital touchpoints before visiting a store or completing a purchase online. The conversion path is now so dynamic that when we consider partners, we need to react with it. The stat that even some of my most sophisticated clients raise an eyebrow at is that 40% of product searches are direct to Amazon vs. Google, which receives 30%.

So what does this mean for the brands and advertisers? How do big and small players prepare for the battle? How do they make sure they stay in the search game and win the consumer amid the digital pollution and noise of the competition?

Shopper marketing vs. channel marketing

The answer, first and foremost, lies in focusing on shopper marketing vs. channel marketing.

One way to achieve this is to embrace the ‘holistic search’ approach, not only by integrating paid and organic search into a single search strategy, but also by rolling it out into the broader search ecosystem beyond ‘traditional’ search engines.

For example, OMD has delivered this approach for Bacardi by expanding its search activities directly into its retailer domains using Criteo’s machine learning technology (formerly known as HookLogic). The campaign helped the brand to overcome the fierce competition on the retailer sites and delivered outstanding results – over 700% ROAS and gaining half of the market share for the promoted products.

Levi’s closely follow suit, and has taken a step further to penetrate the ‘walled gardens’ of Amazon Search (AMS) in a bid to overcome the crowded organic space and firmly establish its dominance on Amazon. But despite endless commercial opportunities on Amazon, the challenges for search marketers are immense – AMS activation and management is fundamentally different from that on ‘traditional search engines’.

To overcome this challenge, OMD teamed up with Levi’s and Kenshoo, as a product design partner, to help the development of the AMS management solution which allows for AMS campaign management on scale. Within a month of on-boarding, OMD managed to scale up Levi’s AMS campaigns increasing traffic by 500% and delivering 4x more sales. As a result, Levi’s is now considering including AMS into the framework of its always-on search strategy.

So while media players continue the race of innovation to meet the modern consumer’s expectation of immediate access to information and goods at the snap of their fingers (or voice!), search evolves as an organic part of daily life.

Approaching search holistically

It is therefore important that brands and marketers start approaching search holistically in the context of the consumer path to purchase. Multi-channel API integrations, pursued by marketing software companies, marketing analytics and attribution solutions, can help in providing adequate measurement framework to understand the impact of each channel on overall search performance.

This may not be achieved overnight while many brands still operate in silos with little collaboration between brand and performance marketing, and a lack of coordination between marketing and merchandising or the online and offline. However, marketers are best positioned to lead clients towards consumer-centric strategies using the wealth of cross-vertical expertise and technology solutions they possess.