From MediaDailyNews: Search Ads Slide As A Way To Reach Consumers
Not a new trend—and likely even more pronounced since this was published—but search is no longer a discovery mechanism.
Search is truly an intent channel—harvesting discoveries happening elsewhere.
One of the 9 F’s of Attention is Future Me.
Purchasing is an act of aspiration. Buying a future state.
As Seth Godin says, very few of our purchases are for what the thing says on the tin.
Our focus, energy and money are often spent on transactions that are disguised as something else. What we’re really doing is buying affiliation, status or the freedom from fear.
Amazon is running a beta called shop brand sites directly, which surfaces results for brands not sold on the platform, directing shoppers to the brand’s site to purchase.
Likely 1 of 2 plays here (maybe both):
- It gets monetized as an ad product
- Recruit more sellers via website referral tracking
The Walmart index is…unclear
The mega-retailer forecasts lower growth this year, saying:
“We have to acknowledge that we are in an uncertain time and we don’t want to get out over our skis here.”
More high earners are shopping for rollbacks, as value remains shoppers’ top priority.
Walmart did not factor looming US tariffs on foreign goods into its forecast, because it’s unclear if or when they’ll kick in.
inventory levels increased 3% last quarter, suggesting it may be calling in orders to get ahead of future levies.
via The Daily Upside
Retro is an evergreen trend, thanks to the One Song podcast I now have a benchmark for what that means:
Retro is almost always running on a 20 year clock
So if you want to try riding the front of the retro wave, look back 19-20 years and pick your trend to revive.
Microsoft’s Clarity is an under discussed part of the analytics toolkit (who doesn’t like free heatmaps and session recordings?), the new conversion maps feature will only make it more useful.
Conversion maps provide specific data of key business metrics of your E-Commerce sites. Through Conversion maps, you can understand your website interactions that affect your purchase rate.
Conversion maps show the conversion rate, representing the percentage of all sessions that resulted in a purchase when a user clicks in a selected area.
Beware “not”
Soon after being exposed to a message, people forget whether or not there was a “not” in it.
Meaning your anti-positioning backfires.
Over time, “not like those other companies” becomes “like those other companies.”
Think in terms of “not,” but don’t say it.
EMARKETER with more good research, as usual.
the most intrusive ads and the least likely to be noticed ads were the ones where the display covers the entire screen.
The best kind, the most likely to be noticed and the least intrusive ads were pre-roll video and targeted ads using your search history were a close second.
the level of interruption of the ad rather than its invasiveness informed how ads were ranked, mid-roll ads, display ads and that fully covered the screen and ads that follow users around the screen were ranked as much more intrusive than any targeting method.
Marketers are bystanders.
In the words of Peter Drucker:
The bystander sees things neither actor nor audience notices. Above all, he sees differently from the way actors or audience see. Bystanders reflect, and reflection is a prism rather than a mirror; it refracts.
As a marketer, you operate in this middle space, at a slight remove.
Your job is—to continue the metaphor of actors and audience—to manage the fourth wall. The vital point where performance meets audience and the magic happens (or doesn’t).