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Google announces a slew of new shopping updates to improve discovery for small brands

This article was reported on — and first published by — Digiday sibling Glossy.

Google Shopping is used by thousands of brands and merchants. But getting in front of shoppers via a Google search has always meant paying tens of thousands of dollars for a promoted spot or winning the SEO lottery that gets you to the top.

But on Thursday, Google announced a slew of new features aimed at making Google Shopping easier for brands to use and break away from the crowd. Google is adding integrations with WooCommerce, GoDaddy and Square, allowing the products of brands using these platforms to automatically show up among Google’s results. These are in addition to the Shopify integration Google announced at its conference last week.

Additionally, brands will soon be able to personalize their listings. Normally, Google Shopping results are all plain product images. But Google is now promising the ability to feature lifestyle imagery and even videos in results.

Google will also add an augmented reality virtual try-on feature for fashion products and expand its existing AR beauty try-on. In addition, it will offer shoppers the ability to see all of a product’s buying and payment options (like online and in-store, and payment options like PayPal and Shop Pay) at the product level, as well as the benefits of a brand’s or retailer’s loyalty program at the listing level. All of these new features will roll out in the second half of 2021.

“There are now over 1 billion shopping sessions a day on Google,” said Matt Madrigal, vp and gm of Google Shopping. “That’s a scale and magnitude we’ve never seen before. So we’re really trying to level the playing field for online retail and the merchants we work with in two ways. We want retailers to foster relationships with brands and make it easier for both to get discovered on Google Shopping.”

Madrigal said Google Shopping saw an 80% increase in the number of merchants on the platform in the last quarter, year-over-year. The vast majority of new additions have been small and medium-sized brands and retailers. There was a 74% year-over-year growth in the number of products listed on Google, and consumer searches more than tripled compared to the previous year.

Google made it free for any merchant to sell on Google Shopping in April of 2020, further incentivizing new merchants to join. Merchants can still pay up to tens of thousands of dollars to get their product promoted to the top of search results, albeit marked with an ad identification.

The goal for Google is to become the first place that people go when looking for a product. Despite Google being the biggest search engine in the world, Amazon edges it out for largest share of product searches, with 54% of the market. Free features like videos and no-commission checkout make Google Shopping more appealing to small brands, while still giving larger brands the option to pay for top placement. Both have contributed to Google Shopping’s growth over the last year.

At the same time, it’s become exponentially harder to stand out on the platform, said Eugene Furman, CMO of DTC brand Xena Workwear, who spends about 75% of his ad budget on Google and Facebook. He was able to grow the company’s sales by 1,000% last year thanks in part to Google Shopping.

“The landscape has definitely changed,” Furman said. “Ad prices have gone up, holiday advertising spend was horrendous on all channels, and efficiency is way down. Every single brand, even the legacy ones, have poured money into platforms like Google, and it’s gotten really crowded.”

In the quarter ending in December, Google’s search and ad revenue was $31.9 billion, up from $27.2 billion in the previous quarter.

Madrigal said one way Google has been aiming to solve for the crowding is with filters for brand values and identity. Currently, Google Shopping has a filter to search for Black-owned businesses, and later this year, it will add another filter for businesses owned by women.

Additionally, Madrigal said the personalization of listings and added visibility of loyalty programs and buying options should all work together to help brands differentiate. A brand with a high-value loyalty program can have the perks prominently displayed, while a brand that excels at product imagery can create a more compelling visual identity for its listings to stand out.

“Right now, the growth in e-commerce globally is really lopsided,” Madrigal said. “It looks like a lot of growth, but it’s mostly coming from a few big players. Our goal is to make a really open marketplace. Because we’re just the platform, we’re indifferent to where the actual transaction takes place.”

The post Google announces a slew of new shopping updates to improve discovery for small brands appeared first on Digiday.

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A lull in the enforcement of Apple’s privacy safeguards causes confusion over fingerprinting

When rules aren’t enforced properly, confusion reigns.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the confusion around what is and isn’t allowed when it comes to fingerprinting, gathered up data points from a device that are used to identify someone across apps and sites.

Even some of the largest mobile measurement firms can’t seem to come to a consensus. Most agree fingerprinting won’t fly with Apple. The company’s main issue being it is normally used to track is customers without their permission. But there are some mobile measurement firms that think it’s ok to cherry-pick certain techniques linked to fingerprinting as a way to smooth over the cracks caused by Apple’s App Tracking Transparency safeguard. Often, those techniques revolved around a process called “probabilistic attribution”.

Where things get really confusing is that fingerprinting is regularly used interchangeably with probabilistic attribution. Usually, it’s done to avoid some of the negative connotations associated with the practice. The reason: probabilistic attribution isn’t matching data from a device in order to uniquely identify it. Instead, it’s matching data from a device to estimate with some degree of certainty whether an ad made someone download an app.

It’s an important distinction for some of the largest mobile measurement firms. They feel probabilistic matching is in line with how Apple helps marketers measure ad campaigns sans personal data, and so aren’t doing anything wrong. But even if they were, it’s not like Apple’s around to tell them anyway. In fact, these efforts are like test cases to establish what it takes to be fully compliant with Apple’s privacy rules.

“Apple will have to keep a close eye on these approaches and enforce ATT against any implementations that are in violation, or risk the policy being completely toothless and consumer privacy commitments not being honored,” said eMarketer analyst Nicole Perrin. “And if that were to happen, I expect the industry will wise up to the ongoing lack of enforcement, encouraging everyone to take these steps to maintain a level playing field.”

Welcome to the unofficial grace period for Apple’s crackdown on in-app tracking where every risk is one worth taking until it’s not.

Mobile measurement firm Adjust recently sent an email to clients that said it would rename “fingerprinting” to “probabilistic matching” on May 20. But it has been at pains to stress that the two terms are not interchangeable. In a blog post, CEO Paul Müller tried to allay any concerns. To paraphrase Müller’s explanation, probabilistic matching isn’t fingerprinting because it doesn’t produce a persistent identifier. So Adjust can only measure what ad a user came from for clients who won’t be able to retarget them without the identifier.

This should be fine with Apple, according to Müller. And yet the company has still advised clients to read Apple’s policy when it comes to determining whether probabilistic attribution is compliant in their eyes.

In other words, it’s a grey area.

Yes, Adjust isn’t sharing the persistent ID with clients. And no it’s not tracking or targeting users across sites or apps. But the company is promoting that it can provide probabilistic attribution when Apple’s mobile identifier isn’t available. Doing so means taking data collected about the device an ad was seen on (think impressions or clicks) and blending it to data taken from the app the ad promoted (like installs and events) to make probabilistic matches. They’re just not sharing it.

Apple could have problems with this if and when it does decide to enforce ATT. That’s because of its broad view on when it’s wrong for marketers to track iOS users. In a nutshell, Apple’s stance boils down to this: if the owner of one app pays the owner of another app for an ad placement then that is tracking because data from both are being merged to facilitate tracking and measurement.

Should this happen without someone’s consent then it’s the advertiser and the publisher on the line even though the data processing was done by the mobile measurement firm. There’s no caveat from Apple to say tracking is fine if one of those firms does the matching. Apple makes it clear that any activity as defined as tracking must have ATT consent.

“Ultimately these solutions will not work,” said Liam Brennan, ‎global director of innovation, ‎MediaCom. “When it comes to the conversation around user privacy and changes in the ID space, stopgaps are just weaker solutions or ways to try to avoid the ‘privacy police’ until they get caught.”

That’s not to say all probabilistic attribution is wrong in Apple’s eyes. After all, there are solutions out there capable of doing attribution this way without resorting to fingerprinting. But Apple needs to be a lot clearer about where it draws the line.

“This lack of certainty is causing major issues for the ecosystem because anyone who truly wants to follow the spirit of the ATT policy is at a major competitive disadvantage right now,” said Alex Bauer, head of product marketing and market strategy at mobile ad tech startup Branch. “Even the most sincere companies can’t sustain that forever if Apple doesn’t follow through with what they’ve promised.”

Both AppsFlyer and Singular take the stance that Apple won’t be cool with probabilistic attribution without consent in the main. There are, however, exceptions based on their own take on Apple’s rules — specifically when it comes to instances when the same company owns both the media the ad appears in and the app it’s promoting. The rationale is that it’s just one company promoting its products, so data isn’t being shared without someone’s consent.

In the case of Singular, there’s a configuration option that a client must use to turn probabilistic attribution on when they want to track the performance of ads across media they own.

AppsFlyer has a similar option built into its dashboard. By default it provides aggregated data i.e. marketers only can see aggregated data about the campaign, not the user. The theory seems to be that so long as the data AppsFlyer lets out of their system is no more granular than the data provided by SKAdNetwork, they can use whatever methods they want (including fingerprinting).

In a statement, Barak Witkowski, vp of product at AppsFlyer said: “Unlike fingerprinting, which seeks to maximize captured data points and create a unique identifier that can be used to track users over an extended period and across websites, AppsFlyer’s privacy-centric solutions seek to do the exact opposite — to minimize the captured data points and prevent the ability to create a unique and persistent identifier.

But there’s nothing to stop clients of these companies from using these options whenever they see fit. If a marketer wanted to track people without getting their consent in order to get a sharper view of how ads performed they could do so at the flip of a switch. In fact, Digiday has seen an email from a mobile ad tech vendor advising clients to do just that.

“It allows these vendors to be ‘publicly compliant’, but while still providing an option that allows publishers and advertisers to maintain the status quo by violating Apple’s policy,” said the ad tech who shared the email but declined to be named as a result.

Until Apple starts enforcing its own ATT rules it’s hard to see how this situation changes. Not when it’s so easy to misuse the tools available to them to get around the tracking safeguards.

“We appear to be the only measurement and attribution provider that is complying with Apple rules. Apple does not say — it’s okay to match data from two separate companies provided that the data isn’t shared — or provided that it’s only exposed with a config switch,” said Charles Manning, CEO of Kochava. “Several ad networks are encouraging non-compliance by suggesting that brands should work with an MMP that doesn’t comply in order to get access to more inventory. This creates incentives for non-compliance, and it’s incumbent upon Apple to enforce their own rules.”

Indeed, all this confusion raises questions over whether Apple is able to enforce ATT or if it has any real interest in enforcing it at all. Either way, the inaction could cause some unintended consequences down the line.

Namely, undermine Apple’s privacy stance. Spurred by ATT, the company is telling customers that it can be their security blanket when it comes to protecting their privacy online. That there are marketers who are currently using this confusion to knowingly track people without consent is something that could contradict this stance.

“It’s in the genetic makeup of anyone who is in ad tech to push the line as far as they possibly can until they’re slapped because rules only matter if they’re enforced,” said a mobile ad tech executive.

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As TikTok becomes pay-to-play, marketers remain bullish on organic strategy

As more brands move TikTok into core paid media strategy efforts, the debate of whether the short-form video app is becoming a pay-to-play space is heating up.

With TikTok’s mysterious algorithm, going viral on the app can be easier said than done. Brands like Pepsi have all but abandoned organic posting in favor of paid media strategy. Meanwhile, other branded accounts like Coca-Cola and Frito-Lay lie dormant on the app.

Agencies focused on figuring out how to go viral on the app are opting in favor of paid in hopes of getting a guaranteed spot in front of TikTok’s massive audience of more than 100 million monthly active users. Still, they remain bullish on organic as the platform’s expensive ad tools don’t quite compete with other social media platforms just yet. Instead, many marketers are taking a more hybrid approach, according to agency execs, using both paid and organic to try and go viral, land cool points with Gen Zers on the app, and see a spike in brand awareness and sales.

“Organic [strategy] is super hard,” said Simon Richings, executive creative director at global creative agency AnalogFolk in London. “It’s like watching things go past in a river and saying we’re going to put our little raft out into the world as well and hope.”

Except with TikTok’s flooded feed, organic strategy is less of a river and more of a waterfall, Richings said, meaning it’ll take a hybrid approach to be successful on the app.

Per previous Digiday reporting, TikTok isn’t cheap and a hashtag challenge could cost advertisers up to $150,000 per week. With the costs and ad product tools needing more fine-tuning, backpack brand Brevite isn’t ready to invest major ad dollars in the app just yet. (The brand declined to disclose ad spend on the app.)

According to the brand’s head of marketing, Dylan Kim, it wouldn’t be surprising to see TikTok’s feed go the way of Facebook or Instagram, in which every few posts is a paid ad. In fact, he believes it’s inevitable.

“If any of these platforms have taught us anything, it’s that they start off with great organic reach, great user engagement, they get those numbers up and then the ads set in,” he said. “Just because the paid [strategy] doesn’t work [to go viral] doesn’t mean that the platform is X’d out completely.”

There’s also data privacy threats looming above marketers, meaning organic strategy may become increasingly important for brand awareness, Kim said. “If we see things fall off a cliff and they stay continuing to be falling off a cliff with iOS14 and things like that, it gives us a better reason to be investing in organic TikTok,” he said.

Sticking with organic posts over the last three months, Brevite received over 4.7 million views on 64 videos, averaging 73.4k views per video. Their most popular video has 1.4M views, according to a spokesperson for the brand.

New York-based media agency 360i started dabbling with organic posts on TikTok for Mondelez brands like Oreo, Sour Patch Kids and Chips Ahoy late last year. According to Eden Lipke, associate director of social media at 360i, the agency operates in a two-pronged approach — organic community building and paid efforts.

“We live in the comment section to make sure we’re engaging in the community in real-time,” she said. “There’s always going to be an opportunity to have paid there. It’s sort of like the gasoline that you put on top of the fire.”

TikTok’s algorithm can be enigmatic, built to surface the things that are most interesting all the time, but a paid ad guarantees views. That being said, a mysterious algorithm is within TikTok’s best interest to ensure brands pay, Richings said.

Earlier this month, AnalogFolk rolled out a TikTok campaign for the U.K. chain Costa Coffee, leveraging both paid and organic strategy from the brand’s page with more than 25,000 followers. For the campaign, the agency created 14 different short videos catering to different TikTok communities, giving it a better chance of going viral. And it did. Each of the 14 campaign videos saw no less than a million views each, averaging at about 1.7 million views per video.

AnalogFolk declined to detail ad spend on the campaign but said the ads were posted organically and then boosted by media spend.

“The tricky thing is there isn’t a rule that says oh, ‘Brands just need to do X,’” he said. “You need your secret weapon as a brand.”

Editor’s note: A previous version of this story stated AnalogFolk’s campaign was predominately paid strategy. This story has been updated to reflect a change due to miscommunication with a source.

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Sunday, May 30, 2021

Startup Spotlight Growth Series: ChartHop

LinkedIn Marketing can play an important role for B2B startups looking to scale. But what are the learnings and strategies fueling their growth? We’re excited to help answer this question with our new Growth Series: an inside look at startup marketers’ approach to successful growth. As your team builds your own marketing strategy, the perspectives shared here will help you optimize, learn, and grow faster.

In this installment of our Growth Series, we’ve interviewed ChartHop’s Growth Marketing Lead, Ben Pollack.

LinkedIn: In a sentence, tell us about ChartHop. What is a fun fact about ChartHop that we wouldn’t find on your LinkedIn Page or website?

Ben Pollack: ChartHop delivers a fresh take on People Analytics, bringing together disparate sources of people data together in a dynamic platform that’s visual and actionable.

A fun fact – we are a completely remote team distributed all over the world. An even more fun fact – we love puns and shamelessly use them for everything. Some might say we’re a hoppy bunch!

LI: What does growth mean to your team? How does your team measure growth?

Ben: Our marketing team’s core growth objective is to build high-quality pipeline that drives “hoppy” customers with the right product-market fit. We’re an ambitious venture-backed startup, so our steep new bookings targets are always balanced with a deep understanding of the customer lifecycle, shooting for best-in-class net revenue retention (at least 120%).

The secret-sauce to our growth is rapid testing, iteration, and constant cross-functional alignment across the org. And last but certainly not least, we believe that empowering personal development will drive overall team growth, so we’re always building upon our domain knowledge and skill sets.

LI: What’s something you wish you knew when first getting started with your paid growth strategy?

Ben: Growth marketers should seldom rely on paid growth as their silver bullet and not all paid spend should be directly attributable.

Paid growth is a helpful lever when accelerating lead gen and pipeline creation. With that said, much of our paid spend is focused on brand building, and that will compound over time. For me, bolstering brand awareness among our ideal customer profile (ICP) is the key objective of paid tactics, empowering more sustainable growth.

It’s also critical to set specific objectives for each channel or campaign, and set expectations accordingly internally. When strategizing your next launch, ask yourself “Is the goal of this paid spend direct lead gen? Brand building? How are we measuring this?”

LI: How did your team identify and optimize your ICP's buyer’s journey?

Ben: There are two main threads at play here: ICP identification and journey optimization.

The key to ICP identification is the first word: ideal. As a young startup with a product that can support what at times seems like infinite use-cases, it’s critical that we consistently speak with customers and analyze our full-funnel metrics (broken out by segment, channel, etc). Through this process, our goal is to truly understand the pain points we’re trying to solve and the market segments that are converting and renewing at a high rate.

Second, as a relatively new business, we have a huge opportunity to increase funnel conversion rates across the board. For us, this all truly begins first with measuring behavior, and second, testing which messages, touchpoints or tactics help facilitate improvements in conversion rate.

LI: What key adjustments have you made to your growth strategy over time and what impact did these have on results?

Ben: Focus. It’s really a relentless, continued emphasis on focus and specificity across the board. Selling into a large total addressable audience like Human Resources, it can be easy to fall into the trap of creating generalized content in an attempt to capture interest from the entire market.

In reality, it’s more effective to run hyper-specific campaigns to a small slice of your target audience to ensure that the messaging really resonates (i.e., bid on a specific use-case or keyword, create remarketing flows for that audience, build nurture cadences for those same prospects that have turned into warm leads, etc). From an impact perspective, these tactics drive immense improvements in conversion rates, spend efficiency and the overall prospect/customer experience.

LI: How do you balance your sales cycle and measuring ROI from paid marketing initiatives?

Ben: Our sales cycles vary in length depending on the size of the customer and complexity of the deal. This can make measuring paid marketing initiatives quite difficult at times – on top of the fact that marketing attribution is a challenging, and misunderstood, discipline.

In my opinion, marketing orgs should always strive to prove ROI in any way they can (direct attribution, correlated attribution, etc). Accurate ROI measurement does not come to fruition without clear goal setting based on the true objective at hand – as an example, if a paid marketing initiative is aimed at creating a category in the long run, it would be foolish to assume immediate return on ad spend.

LI: How do you achieve and measure successful alignment between sales and marketing?

Ben: From day one, we have made the sales and marketing relationship a priority at ChartHop. Sales should always feel like marketing is there to support their goals – and if sales meets their goals, we meet ours.

In many companies, the main marketing Key Performance Indicator (KPI) is Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) driven from inbound, which I think is fundamentally flawed – it creates a natural tension between the two departments. We quickly realized that in order to achieve full alignment, we needed to change our KPI to pipeline created (Sales Qualified Leads). With this, both teams are squarely focused on the north star goal (Annual Recurring Revenue and new bookings) and the prerequisite objective it takes to get there (pipeline)

In addition, we create structured feedback loops, looking at metrics like full funnel conversion rates broken out by different segments (all the way from lead to customer satisfaction score). From a more qualitative perspective, our sales and marketing teams are in constant communication, both on the ground floor and on the leadership levels.

Last, but perhaps most importantly, we leverage robust marketing technology and operations. Through a combination of Hubspot workflows, Outreach sequences, Clearbit data and Slack notifications, we’re able to surface prospect activity in real-time to our sales team (i.e., demo requests, content downloads, re-engagement and everything in-between). This fosters a culture of transparency and empowers our sales team to deploy highly relevant touchpoints to our prospects as quickly as possible.

LI: How does content marketing fuel your lead gen strategy?

Ben: Content marketing is at the core of our lead gen strategy, but in different ways, with varied objectives and distribution tactics.

We produce several engaging blog articles a month to build a healthy Search Engine Optimization (SEO) foundation, which in time should drive a high volume of leads at a low cost. In tandem, we grow brand awareness through thought leadership and other content that’s hyper-topical, both gated and ungated. Conversely, some of our content is aimed at creating intent, written with a more product marketing lens.

It’s critical to produce content with a distribution-focused mindset, ensuring content both resonates with and reaches the desired target audience. Our ICP is somewhat unique in that they’re often the only person in their company doing that type of work, so providing them with best-in-class content goes a long way to create and sustain brand affinity.

LI: What type of content have you seen perform well on LinkedIn?

Ben: Thought leadership through guides and e-books has historically performed well for us. Customer case studies also consistently drive high click through rates and deliver strong ROI; to no surprise, prospects are really interested in learning how their peers at other leading companies are leveraging tech to do their jobs better!

Regardless of the type of content, there needs to be a tight fit between the content being distributed and the audience it’s being distributed to. A generalized piece of content promoted to an umbrella audience won’t deliver the impact you’re hoping for.

LI: What tools or resources do you use to plan and execute your content marketing strategy?

Ben: We’re always looking for new ways to learn, which helps inform our content marketing strategy – and there’s no substitute for simply engaging with other content, customers, partners and analysts in the space. We work closely with the industry to understand the challenges they’re facing so we can provide real value in the content we’re creating.

Through those learnings and conversations, we’re able to consistently produce strong content with a unique angle, packaged in the right way with a tight focus. Execution-wise, as a growth marketer, I seriously embody a distribution-first mindset. We leverage LinkedIn’s targeting solutions plus other third party audience tools (i.e., Primer) to run hyper-targeted content distribution campaigns.

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Marketing Briefing: ‘Sustained commitment’: Nearly a year later, agencies are updating employee diversity data

Last June, agency holding companies publicly disclosed EEOC diversity data — a first for many of the agencies — after an open letter by more than 600 Black employees called for more transparency and inclusivity in the ad industry. Now, nearly a year later, agencies are slowly starting to release updates on the progress that has been made.

Earlier this month, during an Instagram Live with executive creative director Walter Geer III, VMLY&R CEO Jon Cook shared that the agency increased its share of new Black hires from 6.6% to 11.5% this year. And last week, Dentsu unveiled a new diversity, equity and inclusion report with updated EEOC numbers as well as goals to reach by 2025 (what are those too?). The holding company is the first to roll out its updated data, but won’t be the only one as other holding companies indicated data was coming soon when asked by Digiday.

As the updated numbers trickle out, the conversation around the diversity, equity and inclusion issues in advertising is beginning to ramp up again. Releasing updated EEOC numbers are just a snapshot of how the makeup of an agency has changed over the last year. Understanding the progress of DE&I at agencies is much more complicated than that snapshot, according to agency execs and employees.

“There’s a statistical component” said Myron King, chief integration officer and head of a new inclusion experience practice at VMLY&R.“ [With] the numbers, the percentages, but there’s also a qualitative measure. That’s much harder to get to, it requires employee surveys and voice of employees and other things like that. Ultimately you want to create a space in your workplace where all of your employees feel like they belong, where all of your employees feel that they can bring their entire selves to work.”

RAPP’s global chief diversity, equity, inclusion and communications officer, Devin O’Loughlin echoed that sentiment. “People want to join an organization where they feel seen and heard, and can see and hear from people that look like them and have similar experiences — especially at the senior-most levels.”

Whether or not employees feel able to do so will likely vary by the agency and employees’ experience. A Black copywriter who requested anonymity said he feels like there has been progress over the last year with a heightened focus on DE&I at agencies. “I hope more Black people in America feel more comfortable speaking about microaggressions, calling out issues,” said the copywriter. “We’ve definitely moved forward.”

Even as the copywriter believes progress is being made in terms of conversations around DE&I issues in the ad world, he believes that those same agencies need to take a look at how creative assignments are given out and give Black creatives more chances to work big briefs for Super Bowl, Christmas, Easter and more.

Others are a bit more skeptical about agencies’ commitment to DE&I progress.

“Will they keep this up in two or three years when the pressure is not on?,” asked Duane Brown, founder of Take Some Risk. “Will clients ask agencies to have their team represent their customers? Brands and clients need to demand and want better. That is when we would see faster change. Only when your bottom line is getting hurt will you move heaven and earth to make magic happen.”

When it comes to DE&I progress within the ad world historically, “there is an ebb and flow of the organization of talk batters in our industry, both internally and externally,” noted King. “What is essential is a tangible, sustained commitment to measurable change that doesn’t rely on the news cycle or increased prioritization.”

3 Questions with GoDaddy CMO Fara Howard

There’s an ongoing debate about the in-house agency movement. What’s your take on this?

First, let’s clarify the debate: Is having an in-house agency a good thing? I categorically believe it is. I have a long-standing history of working on brands with in-house teams (or standing them up if they didn’t exist) and GoDaddy is no exception. At GoDaddy, we have the benefit of having a highly skilled and tenured in-house agency team which existed before I joined the company. This team works on everything from copy writing to the merchandising on GoDaddy.com to producing national advertisements to developing award-winning docuseries. Being in-house, it lives and breathes our brand mission of empowering entrepreneurs and they can bring that vision to life with a complete and nuanced understanding of the business. They can quickly adjust or shift our marketing strategies to reflect current customer sentiment and ultimately create authentic ongoing storytelling using the same visual imagery and tone of voice that continues to build on itself.

How is GoDaddy working with small businesses, especially as the pandemic has induced a digital revolution and shoppers have high standards for online shopping?

2020 was an extremely critical time for small business owners. Many had to close up shop and rethink their business strategy. However, this also forced many to pivot to digital for the first time and truly invest in an online presence. GoDaddy played an important role in not only helping entrepreneurs go digital but being there to provide them necessary support. Specifically, we launched #OpenWeStand. This was a multifaceted campaign launched on March 20, 2020 and provided small business owners with resources and tools to stay afloat during the most turbulent and uncertain times of the global pandemic. Over 70 brands joined our coalition on OpenWeStand.org and it became an internal rallying cry as well as a highly successful advertising campaign. In addition to OpenWeStand, we also accelerated access to ‘start for free’ products and developed features that increased in importance for our customers, such as e-commerce.

GoDaddy advertising got a face lift a few years back. What’s next on the agenda?

Our goal is to continue to create authentic storytelling driven by our customers. At GoDaddy, we will always put our customers at the center of our advertising. Notably, we’ve seen through the increased brand relevance that we’ve built over the past several years, that these real stories inspire and motivate budding entrepreneurs to take the leap to become small business owners themselves. This positive storytelling loop has also encouraged us to invest in longer form content such as our docuseries Made in America, which shines a light on the diversity of journeys that exist in American small businesses, through intimate and personal stories. This year, we also released Go Forth, a docuseries hosted by professional skateboarder and entrepreneur, Tony Hawk, as he spotlights three adventure-driven and daring small business owners. — Kimeko McCoy

By the numbers

There’s still a lot of debate around returning to the office as vaccine rollout continues to ramp up. While some are excited to get back to in-person collaboration and water cooler talk, others are more hesitant to put themselves at risk, given we’re still in a global pandemic. To quell concerns, agencies are experimenting with continued flexibility in hybrid models. And to return to the office, they may require vaccine passports or proof of vaccination. According to new research from consumer research firm GWI, one in five Americans surveyed believe they should be required. More from the study below:

46 percent of those surveyed said they think people should have to show proof of vaccination to travel internationally, and 27 percent said it should be required to travel within their home country;
23 percent think proof of vaccination should be required to work in an office;
1 in 5 surveyed think people should show proof to dine at a restaurant (20%) and go to a bar/club (21%);
One-third (33%) want vaccine proof for attending live events, and 15 percent believe proof of vaccination is necessary for shopping in non-essential stores (e.g. clothing, electronics); and 16 percent want proof for shopping in essential stores (e.g. grocery, pharmacy)
However, there is some pushback against the idea of vaccine passports: 27 percent of Americans would not support having to show proof of vaccination under any circumstances, and this portion reaches over one third (34%) of rural Americans. — Kimeko McCoy

Quote of the week

“There’s a cap on how much money linear can take. That will be a huge part of the discussion, and most marketers are likely [to] or should be moving money out of linear because of the decline in ratings.”

— an agency exec on how streaming is reshaping TV upfronts, per Tim Peterson.

What we’ve covered

A look at what the economic pandemic recovery looks like in various countries around the world.
How the world’s biggest advertisers are spending.
Why some agencies are taking a second look at summer Fridays.

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Why some brands plan to participate in Facebook Live shopping events this summer

Facebook took a step Tuesday in making live stream shopping more mainstream. The platform is kicking off so-called Live Shopping Fridays, a three-month-long event in partnership with major makeup and apparel brands.

Every Friday starting May 21, three brands will rotate to host 30-minute long live shopping events each week in their respective Facebook Shops, focusing on promoting products. The events and brands are centered around three themes — makeup, apparel, and skincare. Participating brands included Alleyoop, Abercrombie & Fitch, Bobbi Brown Cosmetics, Clinique, Dermalogica, Dolce Vita, Murad, Sephora, and ZOX. Each brand will host three live shopping events total.

The wider reach of Facebook, coupled with big brand clout, might move the needle on a selling channel that is still fairly new in the U.S, especially when compared to China, where live stream shopping is the norm.

For some brands, that reach, and data that comes with it, is appealing.

“In retail, we just don’t have good data,” said Leila Kashani, CEO and founder of Alleyoop cosmetics. “You don’t see who’s bought the product, who stood there and tested it. We only see sales. So any data Facebook gives us in this experience is more valuable than what we would get in a retail setting.”

Through Facebook Live, brands are provided email addresses, shipping and billing addresses when a consumer completes a purchase. This summer, Facebook will also promote the live shows via newsfeed placements, where users can click “interested” to be reminded of the live show later. The company will also stream the shows in its Shop tab within the Facebook app.

This isn’t the first time Facebook has hosted a live shopping event. In late April, Facebook partnered with Petco to host its first live pet fashion show and dog adoption drive. The show featured products from Youly and Reddy, Petco’s private labels. Amazon, Walmart, and Nordstrom also offered their own versions of live shopping.

Yulie Kwon Kim, director of product management commerce at Facebook, said that the platform decided to focus on beauty and fashion because those categories are highly visual. “This is a way for those brands to experiment, and to drive broader shopping awareness,” she said.

Alleyoop will be the first brand in the event. In its 30-minute segment, Kashani will be joined by a makeup artist to discuss product uses, tips and tricks, as well as product combinations to achieve a full face of makeup. The idea is that the consumer is drawn in by the performance, but ultimately clicks through to purchase the products featured.

The event will be hosted in the PR agency’s office of Alleyoop for more space, but the technical setup is pretty simple. “It will be me and two other members of my team. As long as our products are listed in our Facebook Shop, we’ll be good to go,” said Kashani.

For Alleyoop, the live events are a way to meet their customers where they are, building on convenience. Kashani explained that the live shopping experience will occur in three rounds. The first event is a baseline, measuring the average number of viewers, where in the stream they drop off, and what products sell best. The second and third live shows will build on those data points. “We don’t know what we’ll learn, but having that data nonetheless will help our products,” she said.

Facebook live streams enter a crowded field, competing with several other platforms for consumer attention including Amazon, Netflix, YouTube and TikTok. “When Facebook’s revenue is totally ad-driven, it needs to find other ways to up that time on screen, it needs those eyeballs,” said Lance Muranaga, vp of revenue at Abacus Agency.

Facebook has tried several ways to keep users in its apps. On the e-commerce side, Facebook launched Facebook Shops in May of 2020, and in March 2019 it rolled out Instagram Checkout to drive in-app purchases. In a Clubhouse discussion in March of this year, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that there are now more than 1 million active Facebook Shops, and over 250 million people are “interacting” with them every month.

Still, Facebook live shopping is a medium that many brands don’t see a need for.

“Our clients, big and small, are interested in learning more about live shopping, but aren’t totally bullish on it,” said Muranaga.

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CAMP wants to patent e-commerce for kids with its new Present Shop

As with any retailer, CAMP had to figure out its e-commerce strategy fast once the pandemic hit and temporarily shut the doors of its five toy stores.

But the problem with moving a store for kids online is that the experience is not nearly as fun as walking down an aisle of toys with $20 in hand, children cannot be trusted to not buy $2,600 worth of SpongeBob popsicles while their parents’ aren’t looking.

CAMP’s new Present Shop, which launched today, is trying to solve for both of those problems, all while assuring the thousands of available products are safe, curated and appropriate for its young shoppers.

The online shop gives children the creative oversight of selecting the best gifts for their friends, parents, siblings or themselves on special occasions and holidays, like birthdays and Mother’s or Father’s Day. It’s also meant to replicate the fun of the in-store experience with a video game-like design.

“People don’t come to CAMP to shop, they come to CAMP for an experience,” said CEO Ben Kaufman. “We’re not trying to sell you the same Barbie you could buy at Amazon or Walmart. Instead, we want to deliver you a digital experience just the same way we deliver you a physical experience to our stores.”

To use Present Shop, an adult first fills out the address for where the gift will be sent and buys a credit on the shop that generates a unique code, like a gift card. That code is given to the child, who receives a certain number of tokens they can use within the shop, gamefiying the experience like an arcade prize counter.

Once the child enters the site, they are asked by a cartoon bear mascot who they are shopping for, a quick overview of that person’s favorite activities and foods and then they are served a collection of dozens of items that are best suited for the gift recipient. After the child spends the total coins, they can select and customize a card and it gets shipped off with the gift to the recipient in a special present-like box.

Currently, Present Shop is patent pending and while Kaufman said other toy retailers have approached CAMP looking to white label the technology for their own sites, this e-commerce platform will not turn into a licensing business and will remain exclusive to CAMP.

CAMP’s first iteration of experiential e-commerce took place during the the holiday season and was its virtual take on the classic white elephant gift swap. The program ran for three weeks and at its peak had 20,000 people playing in one day on Christmas Eve, driving in a total of $1 million in sales during the first 10 days alone, according to Kaufman.

Shortly after white elephant wrapped, Kaufman said his team started working on the next e-commerce business, something that would live next to the company’s newly established media website and would become a permanent part of the business. In total, it took the team five months to come up with the idea and build the tech stack for Present Shop, he said.

“Present Shop is truly a scale play for us. It takes a long time to build stores and build up a brick and mortar footprint. So this allows us to to meet more families sooner,” said Kaufman.

There are not any sponsorships tied to the shop at launch and while it is a possibility in the future, Kaufman said it is not a priority. What is a crucial, he added, is building a loyal batch of customers who use the platform all year long.

The biggest challenge for getting traction for Present Shop will be getting parents on board, according to Ben Zettler, a digital marketing and e-commerce consultant and founder of Ben Zettler Digital Media.

Parents and lawmakers are already expressing concerns for other kid-focused internet platforms that are coming into the picture, including Instagram for kids, citing concerns around privacy and mental health. The primary goal for CAMP will be selling the parents on the safety first and foremost, said Zettler.

At launch, Present Shop will be primarily marketed via social media campaigns on Instagram, Facebook and YouTube to parents, using a video ad that highlights the particular safety issues kids face when searching terms like “gifts for adults,” according to the company.

“Kids will likely love it as long as they get the keys to the kingdom,” Zettler said.

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