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Shoppers be shopping, but they’re searching for savings.

Retailers need to ‘competitively promote’ the rest of the year / Though consumers are still spending, a Numerator report suggests that they continue to search for markdowns.

Brand loyalty is being replaced with budget loyalty and deal seeking.

4 of this piece’s 5 holiday shopping predictions relate to this behavior.

  • Spending growth will be low
  • Buy Now, Pay Later will grow
  • It’ll be all about the discounts, and shoppers will wait

Will Prime Day 2 cause an October sales spike though?

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4 Questions for Determining Worth (and therefore pricing):

  • Am I selling information (commodity) or transformation (value)?
  • How much more is the after-state worth than the before-state?
  • Could I do this myself and, if so, what will it cost in time and resources?
  • If I paid someone else to do this for me, how much would that cost?
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“Pricing is branding”

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The size of your funnel doesn’t matter if it points to a site that won’t perform.

It’s fun to play with all the shiny, traffic driving toys, but focusing on the platforms you own pays the biggest dividends.

Comparing this strategy of focusing on traffic without caring about site design isn’t quite like putting lipstick on a pig, though it’s equally misguided. It’s more like devoting all your time and energy toward inviting your mother-in-law for a nice dinner at your house, only for you to fail to clean your place.

Council Post: Improve Your E-Commerce CRO Before SEO

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🚨 New acoustic attack steals data from keystrokes with 95% accuracy

When Zoom was used for training the sound classification algorithm, the prediction accuracy dropped to 93%, which is still dangerously high, and a record for that medium.

Such an attack severely affects the target’s data security, as it could leak people’s passwords, discussions, messages, or other sensitive information to malicious third parties.

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A group formed by Meta, Microsoft, Amazon Web Services and TomTom is releasing data that could enable companies to build maps that rival products from Google and Apple.

Of note because I think maps will become an increasingly important OS later moving forward. With AR, AI on the edge and ambient computing devices, and self-driving cars (maybe). All benefit from geospatial awareness.

Also, I think TomTom used to help Apple with its maps. And Meta, Microsoft, and Amazon could be an interesting team up elsewhere.

Meta, Microsoft and Amazon team up on maps project to crack Apple-Google duopoly

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I stand by the opinion that podcast advertising is woefully underrepresented as a percentage of most marketing medium portfolios.

Almost 42% of the US population now consumes podcasts monthly, with a remarkable 75% of podcast listeners having made or contemplated a purchase after hearing a product or service promotion on their favorite shows.

Quantifying brand marketing uncertainties and risks, Veritonic says audio is paramount

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TikTok’s looking to align its ad targeting processes with emerging data privacy shifts through the addition of a new offering, called PrivacyGo, which would enable advertisers to match their own CRM info with TikTok’s audience insights, in a privacy-protective way.

The process would essentially function like a data clean room, where collaborating parties share their data into a protected digital space.

Does the Chinese gov’t have a key to the clean room?

But seriously, CRM data will become increasingly important as cookies crumble.

TikTok’s Testing New Privacy-Protective Ad Targeting Tools

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What’s hot like Hansel on YouTube?

  • Popular media as a muse: inspired by big media events, like the Barbie movie (aka newsjack mass culture moments)
  • The Rise of the Rizz: virality via participation in a viral trend (aka newsjacking viral youth movements)
  • Skibidi Toilet: short-form narrative content that leaves open space for the viewer to fill the blanks (basically video as poetry)
  • Permission to flex: personality types (or horoscopes) as vehicle for self-sharing without feeling self-promotional
  • Chess: ♟️ (or, put a new twist on something old)

YouTube Highlights Latest Shorts Trends to Help Inform Your Content Approach

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What are the kids doing these days?

If they’re between the ages of 6-12, they might be listening to podcasts.

Twenty-nine percent of U.S. Kids Ages 6-12 Listen to Podcasts Monthly

A great medium for screen-wary parents.

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I’ve been waiting for this since the #BanTikTok fervor.

The Record: Lawsuit: ByteDance’s CapCut app secretly reaps massive amounts of user data

The ByteDance-owned CapCut video editing app gathers significant amounts of private data, including facial scans, from its 200 million active users, generating huge profits and potentially allowing the Chinese government to access that data, according to a proposed class action lawsuit filed in an Illinois federal court.

It’s not about the name of the app, it’s about who has access to the database. (Thus, Apple vs. UK over iMessage & FaceTime.)

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🚨 New variants found of malware that targets Facebook business accounts 🚨

To gain access to target systems, hackers used phishing links, tricking victims into downloading files that contained the malicious infostealer, Unit 42 said.

Once the malware is executed, it checks for any logged-in Facebook business accounts in the default browser and proceeds to hack them. It steals various information about the target, such as their follower count, user verification status, account credit balance and ad information.

Be careful with those Meta-looking messages!

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The Drum: Nearly 90% of consumers no longer trust influencers

Is this why Pinterest basically avoided (~9:43) the word “creator” in its last investor call? (A stark turn from previous calls for the inspiration platform.)

Or maybe it finally realized it’s social bookmarking, not media.

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More ads in more places.

Walmart: more self-checkout screen and in-store radio spots

Uber: not really new placements (though video is still new-ish and others might be coming), but more advertisers using the platform

Giphy?: new ad platform rolling out later this year

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The race for a generative AI-powered smart assistant is on.

Axios: Google Assistant to get an AI makeover

Axios: Amazon wants Alexa to bring AI into the home

It was bad timing for Microsoft that Cortana was sunset before the OpenAI partnership. But maybe The Windows Co wants to focus on enterprise and workplace solutions (where voice can be inconvenient).

This is another space where Apple could dominate had Siri not been left to languish. Siri + generative AI + market saturation + Airpods = conversational computing platform

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What signals are left if these are removed? Is advertising worth it at that point?

Meta Platforms has proposed asking all users in Europe to decide whether they would like to see ads targeted based on how they interact with the company’s apps, such as what videos they watch or posts they share.

And isn’t that first-party data? The kind of thing that’s supposed to fill the cookie-shaped gap all platforms are prepping for?

WSJ: Meta Offers to Seek Consent for Highly Personalized Ads in Europe

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Sometimes it’s a good reminder that just because if works somewhere else, doesn’t mean it will work here, for you.

But he may be missing a major point: The US isn’t China and WeChat’s success may not be replicable.

Business Insider: If Elon Musk understood anything about China, he’d know his attempt to make X a super app like WeChat is doomed to fail

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As the cookie gods severed their ties to the marketing world, watching as the idols made in their image crumbled, they decreed: “and ye, soon unto everything will be an ad platform”

According to [Intuit] advertisers can potentially reach over six million QuickBooks Online customers in the US through the network

The network is touting the depth of Intuit’s data which it says allows it to identify business insights sooner than insights currently available from commercial business databases.

MediaPost: Intuit Launches B2B Ad Network Targeting Small Business Owners