Amazon is loosening its grip on customers and letting some sellers reach out to them
April 23, 2021 | CNBC
TLDR
- Amazon recently began piloting a tool for some companies to communicate with customers who opt to follow them.
- Amazon has long prohibited merchants from soliciting customers unless it concerned things such as the status of their order.
- The company has rolled out several tools to help businesses build a presence on Amazon as it faces competition from the likes of Shopify.
Brief
Last week, Amazon began piloting a tool that enables U.S. companies that are part of its Brand Registry program to email marketing materials to shoppers who have opted to “follow” their brands. These companies can then notify those shoppers when they launch a new product or promotion. The follow button is featured in areas such as a businesses’ store page and videos on Amazon Live, Amazon’s livestream shopping platform. Amazon will give companies aggregate data when they use the tool, called “Manage Your Customer Engagement,” that shows them how many emails will go out when they decide to share marketing campaigns with their followers. Companies can also view metrics to see how their campaigns were received. More than 350,000 brands have registered to be part of the program, which has since expanded to include other benefits.
- Read the full article from CNBC
Media Buyers Are Upping Digital Video's 2021 Budget Share, But Also Linear's
April 23, 2021 | MediaPost
TLDR
- Search's share downgraded from 16% to 13%
- 54% of CTV buyers say they'll be allocating more to programmatic buying
- 56% plan to invest in addressable TV, up 18% since November
- Investment in first-party data acquisition and partnerships up by 26% since November
Brief
Media buyers plan to increase U.S. spending for digital video to 20% of their total media budgets this year — up from an average of 13% in IAB’s last survey, conducted in November 2020. However, it's not a case of more money coming out of linear TV, Instead, all other traditional media are set to take a hit, with their share at 10% - down from 14% in November. Search's share downgraded from 16% to 13%, as are podcasts, digital audio and digital out-of-home, which in combination are set for a 9% share, versus 12% as of November.
More than half (54%) of CTV buyers say they'll be allocating more of that channel’s investment to programmatic buying than in 2020. Most who buy digital video also said that reserve-based buying will probably (52%) or definitely (27%) become more “scatter-like” as programmatic continues to grow. 56% plan to invest in addressable TV, up 18% versus November. Investment in first-party data acquisition and partnerships has seen the largest increase in prioritization since November — up 26%, with 64% now citing this as a priority.
- Read the full article from MediaPost
Bloomberg Media makes first-party data push via ad platform
April 29, 2021 | Marketing Interactive
TLDR
- Bloomberg Media has created its own ad platform named Bloomberg Iris
Brief
Bloomberg Media has created its own ad platform named Bloomberg Iris, which has already helped Bloomberg grow its subscriber base and serve advertisers with first-party data and contextual solutions. Iris groups information from signed-in subscribers into four broad categories: behavioural, contextual, personal, and research data. It then processes the information to build deep insights of its audiences, something it currently nicknames "contextual plus". Iris creates segments that can be made available to all of Bloomberg Media’s direct or programmatic guarantee clients through the way they traffic and set up their campaigns. The data shows insights about where audiences might be physically located, what content, topics and themes they repeatedly interact with or consume and what interests they might have offline. Iris does not use any information from its base of Bloomberg Terminal subscribers and is only for digital users of Bloomberg.com.
- Read the full article from Marketing Interactive
