‘Feel good’ spending is on the rise
TLDR
- A new behavioural science study released by Interac shows Canadians are increasingly making non-essential purchases to boost their moods amid the pandemic.
Brief
The study, conducted by Hill+Knowlton Strategies for Interac, took 1,088 Canadian debit users through simulated shopping experiences and diary exercises to test the emotions associated with their spending and how it changed depending on what they were buying. It found that “feel-good” spending – defined as any purchase that’s “non-essential” and made to boost someone’s mood – is on the rise. This is especially true when the purchases are linked to someone’s passions, an effect that was seen regardless of the price. This was especially true for Generation Z and Millennial adults, with a respective 66% and 58% respectively more likely to do so than in pre-pandemic times, compared to 35% of Baby Boomers.
But the experiment also allowed Interac to test the survey answers against actual actions. Among the experiment’s other findings were that, when an item costs less than $50 of someone’s own money, giving it as a gift is more likely to be a happy experience than buying something for yourself. The findings will help Interac better connect with its consumers, says Andrea Danovitch, AVP of marketing and brand at Interac.
Snapchat doubles down on its advertising offer, but will brands bite?
TLDR
- Snapchat has expanded as it opened up everything from Commercials to e-commerce and upped the ante for professional creators while ad revenue soared 66% this year
Brief
Snapchat’s ads business has been built on Sponsored Lenses, instream Snap Ads and publishers creating content for its Discover platform. But in the past year it has doubled down on its offering, releasing new e-commerce and AR shopping tools, rolling out its dynamic ads format globally and making its Reserved Buys tool open to all. Dynamic Ads has proven a hit. Targeting e-commerce and other direct-to-consumer brands, Snapchat has allowed advertisers to quickly and easily create ads in real-time, pulling from their own product catalogues. These ads are then targeted at users based on their interests.
Since launching it in Q4 last year, Toccara Baker, head of product marketing at Snap, says big brands have been using it to mirror major TV campaigns, but even though there are plenty of demographic stats showing that the age categories have widened, there’s still this sense amongst marketers that this is only a platform for Gen-Z.
- Read the full article from The Drum
The Post Pandemic World Might Be In for a Cybersecurity Disaster
TLDR
- The number of hacks and other types of cybersecurity attacks and breaches has been increasing pretty dramatically, and the past year.
- More than half (51%) of millennial respondents would rather use a potentially insecure app vs call or go to a physical location in person
Brief
The Morning Consult conducted a survey sponsored by IBM Security and this revealed that the fact that so many people were working from home has resulted in them becoming somewhat lax with regards to the cybersecurity protocols that they follow. Rather, a far more pertinent contributor to this sort of thing is the fact that there has been such a huge increase in the number of apps that people sign up for and use relatively regularly. When these people return to working from an office in any capacity at all, suffice it to say that the sheer quantity of easy to crack passwords would potentially result in malicious actors and hackers having a field day that would enable them to breach security in a wide range of organizations.
- Read the full article from Digital Information World
