Demandware has officially ascended into the clouds. The ecommerce platform that Salesforce bought for $2.8 billion in June became Commerce Cloud Tuesday, and will gradually retire the Demandware brand. Next step: integration. While that process won’t be entirely onerous – Demandware and Salesforce Marketing Cloud clients have “significant overlap,” said Commerce Cloud marketing SVP Elana Anderson – there […]
Every retailer that isn’t Amazon is thinking about how not to get crushed by Amazon. “Amazon is taking over retail,” said Oliver Chen, managing director and senior equity research analyst at Cowen and Co., speaking at AdExchanger’s Omni.Digital conference in Chicago on Thursday. Based on its recent research, Cowen is betting that by 2017 Amazon […]
Despite Amazon’s legacy as a giant digital walled garden, marketers say it’s in the early stages of a major expansion into an ad platform model. Specifically, Amazon is testing ways to tie together its properties to form a more comprehensive, full-funnel offer, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the early products. Amazon didn’t return […]
Consumer packaged goods companies are going direct-to-consumer, spurred by a desire for greater data governance and less reliance on third-party retailers. As a result, the principles behind shopper marketing, which traditionally centers on in-store promotions, are blurring with brand marketing, which focuses on building brand affinity. “We’ve seen shopper marketing move from this singular approach […]
As one of the largest ultra-low-cost carriers in the US, Spirit Airlines became synonymous with nickel and diming passengers for anything beyond a basic seat. But with a recent CEO change and a planned site relaunch this fall, Spirit is also trying to become more data-driven to improve customer retention and new passenger acquisition. “We’re […]
One year ago, eBay put its enterprise marketing assets up for sale, and its commerce platform Magento was taken private again. Now Magento is making an acquisition of its own. The company revealed on Monday it had acquired RJMetrics, a Philadelphia-based advanced analytics startup. Financial terms of the deal were not announced, but RJ Metrics […]
Less card. More connected commerce. That’s Mastercard’s new mantra as it paves the way for payments in an IoT environment. While IoT commerce might mean consumers buy en masse from their connected fridge one day, Mastercard is starting from a more tangible place, helping brands like JetBlue test bookings in chat apps like Facebook Messenger. […]
Groupon is trying to evolve from an aggregator of merchant discounts to a destination designed for “local discovery.” Rather than asking consumers to redeem a discount via a single daily email, Groupon wants to weave its service more broadly into the fiber of local commerce – whether that’s facilitating merchant payments or surfacing active deals […]
HookLogic, which places ads on its retail clients’ ecommerce sites, on Tuesday released two products that expand the reach of its ad-serving capabilities. The company will place ads on platforms such as Google and Facebook, and has introduced the attribution tool HookLogic 360 to measure within its retail network. It also revealed a unique way […]
One Kings Lane, the home furnishings and décor e-tailer, puts a lot of time and money into its blog. With home tours of celebrities and tips from professional designers, the content evokes luxe shelter magazines. Plus, there are shoppable links within each post. While the content team used to promote the posts, the rise of […]
Since its split from PayPal – and the $925 million divesture of its enterprise technology business last summer – eBay has been relatively silent. But judging by its latest quarterly earnings in late April, eBay is busy rethinking its business strategy. The ecommerce marketplace surpassed some analysts’ expectations when it posted a 6% revenue increase […]
Ecommerce and marketing are converging and, as a result, e-tailers are uniting their supply chain, CRM and marketing stacks. Qubit, a startup founded by a bunch of former Google employees, is tackling that technology intersection. Following a $40 million Series C round in February from Goldman Sachs and the venture arms of SAP and Salesforce, […]
Retargeting, a word long associated with the cookie-based world of direct-response display advertising, is getting a refresh. With the explosion of mobile and subsequent deterioration of cookie matches, marketers are demanding upper-funnel features that go well beyond conversion and tracking pixels. “What we’re seeing across our portfolio with clients like Nike, for example, is they’re […]
At Amazon Media Group (AMG), sometimes the objective isn’t to sell advertisers more ads. AMG has a lesser-known service – ecommerce marketing – where it might evaluate a partner’s broader retail health and the roles contextual elements (e.g., Amazon product detail pages), third-party placements or product availability play in the path to conversion. “You can’t […]
Cardlytics, which, in its first iteration, fueled card-linked offers for banks and financial services firms, is opening up new ways to monetize around the private bank channel. The company, which sits on transactional data spanning 109 million accounts in the US alone, is eyeing longer-term deals with agency holding groups. It’s also beefing up demand […]
Over two years, a lot has changed for online contact lens seller 1-800 Contacts. “In 2013, we didn’t even have a mobile app,” said its VP of digital commerce, Justin Olson. Contrast that with 2015: “Seventeen percent of our total orders came through the app and about 20-25% of orders come through mobile web.” Olson, […]
Q4 ecommerce sales were marked by a strong increase in transaction volume and a spike in mobile conversions, a smattering of retail reports shows. Among specific retailers, Amazon was the runaway winner (no surprise there) and brick-and-mortar players may emerge as losers, if an early glum report from Macy’s is any indicator. Amazon reported dramatic […]
The remnants of eBay Enterprise (which, despite the name, is no longer owned by eBay) is seeking to plant a stake in “post-click” commerce. This is why its private equity owner Sterling Partners merged eBay Enterprise, back in November, with a commerce tech company in its portfolio called Innotrac. The combined entity will be rebranded […]
Pinterest made sense for The Grommet right from the start. The Grommet is an ecommerce site where inventors and entrepreneurs can launch and sell their products – everything from the innovative (lunchboxes that unzip into placemats) to the strange, but cool (liquid that can be applied to the fingertips of gloves to make them touchscreen-friendly). In […]
The beginning of the holiday sales period was record-breaking for retailers, despite thinner Black Friday crowds and reduced Cyber Monday shoppers. (121 million compared to 127 million last year according to the National Retail Foundation.) Still, weekend sales reached $8 billion – following a disappointing weekend sales period last year – while Monday sales passed […]
With turkeys almost in the oven, retailers and ecommerce companies are hoping the investments they’ve made all year long in audience segmentation, mobile tech and cross-channel measurement will pay off in the make-or-break holiday season. Ecommerce in particular is looking to benefit from the maturation of ongoing retail and ecommerce trends – such as offline […]
Digital marketers spend a disproportionate amount of budget during the holiday season – but is all that cash actually generating incremental sales? Jewelry brands spend more in Q4, roughly 60% of their annual spend, than they do in the other three quarters of the year combined, based on analysis from Nielsen. Toy brands spend around 56% […]
Consumer packaged goods companies, historically big TV spenders, are moving money to digital video. MyWebGrocer, an ecommerce platform and ad network for grocers and CPGs, is witnessing this shift. The company, which manages $40 million in digital media spend and which helps CPG advertisers target ads based on its retail partners’ first-party data, has built […]
During his first US appearance, Alibaba CEO Daniel Zhang pledged the commerce giant wanted to help brands with cross-border commerce, not that it planned to expand into the US market. It appears he is making good on this strategy. Alibaba on Monday formed a strategic partnership with consumer packaged goods brand Unilever in order to […]
EBay has confirmed plans to sell eBay Enterprise, its enterprise commerce and marketing services business, to a handful of equity and commerce firms for $925 million, one day before it spins off PayPal as a standalone entity. The divestiture creates a new standalone commerce and marketing tech company. Marketing components within the eBay Enterprise stack […]
Google wants to prove it’s on retailers’ sides – big time. During a Google Shopping presentation for press at the company’s New York headquarters Wednesday, the search behemoth rolled out a slate of new mobile shopping features. They include: Shopping Ads for Best Queries, which lists results for products based on online reviews; Google Now Price Drop […]
Yieldify is trying to solve what CEO and co-founder Jay Radia calls “a trillion-dollar problem” – which is part of why the company has been able to attract such big-name investors. The London-based startup announced an $11.5 million Series A funding round on Thursday led by Google Ventures and SoftBank Capital. At the moment, conversions on […]
Alibaba’s sale of its US shopping site 11 Main on Tuesday may have looked like it was waving the white flag in surrender to Amazon and eBay, but CEO Daniel Zhang reaffirmed the Chinese commerce giant’s pursuit of cross-border commerce in his first onstage appearance in the United States. “Yes, we are strong in ecommerce, […]
As Daymond John approached the hotel valet, a kid – who recognized John as one of the sharks on the ABC series “Shark Tank” – asked for help becoming a rap star. John demurred. “I can’t do that,” he said. “I make T-shirts for a living.” And then the valet pulled up with the kid’s […]
Macy’s, Walmart, Best Buy: all brick-and-mortar giants looking to go multichannel. But what about the smaller shop owners that don’t have the resources to invest in and maintain digital presences? Many young ecommerce providers are aggregating small businesses into a single, online bazaar. If you’re an independent retailer, these service providers can give you the […]
