eMarketer’s Retail Lessons from Holiday Season 2014

A big portion of Apsalar’s business is in supporting companies active in mcommerce – specifically in the retail, etail, travel and personal finance verticals. So we are always watching for new reports about the macro state of the mcommerce industry.

There’s a strong presentation available on the eMarketer site that outlines key trends in retail, ecommerce and mcommerce for the period between Thanksgiving and New Year’s 2014. A couple of highlights:

• eMarketer says that a whopping 19% of US ecommerce sales in the season came via smartphones
• There were more than 150M US mobile shoppers this season
• Researchers observed a strong correlation between phone screen size and the rate of mobile shopping, with the growth of phablets contributing to the strong mcommerce results for the period
• Responsive web design for retail sites also appears to be a significant contributor
• Retail apps have gotten better and adoption has increased

The key force slowing mcommerce growth? According to consumers, it’s the need for easier checkout.

There are lots of other interesting insights for the US retail arena in the presentation. Take a moment to check out the study here.

Welcome Raj Kandasamy & Jim Nichols to the Apsalar Management Team

Apsalar's delighted to announce the appointment of Raj Kandasamy as VP of Engineering and Jim Nichols as VP of Marketing. In their new roles, Kandasamy will be responsible for all aspects of engineering and the company’s development team, while Nichols will be responsible for all aspects of brand development and marketing for us.

Since exiting the media business in January 2014, Apsalar has made tremendous progress as a marketing technology company and has seen great success in the marketplace helping companies measure their mobile marketing effectiveness. As Apsalar continues its growth streak, it’s time for us to accelerate that growth by bringing to our management team these two highly experienced individuals.

About Raj

Raj Kandasamy brings outstanding experience in big data engineering, real-time insights and marketing technology development to our company. Raj focuses on building technology solutions that meet today’s business targets, while also anticipating challenges of SaaS platforms.

Most recently, he was VP of Engineering and Data for OpenX, a leading digital, and mobile advertising technology company. Before OpenX, he was Director of Engineering for the Aggregate Knowledge media intelligence and data management platform, now part of Neustar. At Aggregate Knowledge, he took their big data analytics platform to serving billions of requests a month, all while keeping uptime intact. He began his successful career with Intuit and Netscape. Raj holds a BS in Computer Science from the Thiagarajar College of Engineering.

About Jim

Jim Nichols brings more than 20 years of B2B and B2C marketing experience to Apsalar. His career spans advertising, CPG and software brand management, and marketing leadership for many digital media, adtech and martech businesses.

Most recently he was VP of Marketing for Conversant, where he led the rebrand of that company from ValueClick, Inc. and its six associated businesses to a single brand and company focused on personalized marketing. The success of that rebrand contributed to the $2.3B sale of Conversant to Alliance Data (NYSE: ADS) in December, 2014. Before Conversant he led the strategy practice for Catalyst:SF, where he developed positionings and go-to-market plans for more than 40 adtech, digital media and social start-ups and established players. He began his career in brand management and agency roles for leading global holding company agencies and manufacturers.

Jim holds a BA in US History from University of Pennsylvania and an MBA in Marketing from University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

Learn more about the Apsalar management team here.

Location Based Mobile: Location Location Location! What Makes Sense for Real Estate May NOT Be the Magic Bean for Mobile Advertising

Today on Chief Marketer, Conversant Mobile GM Kurt Hawks provided an important reminder that consumer insight and not location should be at the center of your mobile strategy. My favorite lines from the piece say it all:

A consumer’s purchase history and interests are the best predictors of future shopping behavior, not their location alone. Think about it. A vegan is probably not the best target for a butcher shop no matter how close that person is to the meat-slicer. Purchase and interest data give advertisers the critical insights necessary to use location data intelligently. So they can find the committed carnivores in the appropriate proximity around the store instead of the herbivores leaning against the window.

In digital we have a tendency to seek simple answers to complex questions. As Kurt notes, location can be a valuable component of a larger targeting strategy focused on genuine consumer insight.

Check out the post here. 

Travel and Affiliate Marketing

My friends at CJ Affiliate have just released a new benchmarking study for the travel industry, and many of the findings are rather fascinating. 

The study is the latest in an annual series produced by CJ, providing the industry's most comprehensive benchmarking for:

• Clicks

• Bookings

• Average Booking Value

• Rate of Consumption

To create the CJ Affiliate Travel Benchmarks report they focused on measuring the growth of the primary actions that travel advertisers track in the CJ Network—airline ticket sales, car rentals and hotel room bookings. This report looked at all network advertisers who reported sales of these actions in 2012 and 2013. The performance was aggregated for four key metrics and then averaged to achieve a category average for each quarter of the calendar year. To address outliers in the category, they used trimmed averages which exclude the top and bottom 2.5 percentile. 

Check out this great report now, at no cost, by visiting our Insights and Ideas section on the Conversant website. 

Would You Like to Get Better Results From Cross Device?

The typical consumer now uses just over three different devices to access the web. Given that, cross-device capabilities are critical to the success of today’s digital campaigns. But while many marketers are aware of “what works” in cross-device, something is often lost between conception and execution of cross-device campaigns. In the rush to get programs up and running on “Internet Time,” cross-device efforts frequently fall short of best practices. Keep the following strategies in mind as you architect your next cross-device campaign.

First, don’t think in screen silos and don’t think about cross-device solely in context of media delivery. To truly succeed in cross-device, your approach must be all-encompassing. This means that data, delivery, and insights gathering must all be considered when you are devising your cross-device strategy.

• Cross-Device Data: According to comScore, consumers now spend 60% of their online time on mobile devices. And consumer behavior can vary greatly from device to device. As such, to attain a 360 degree view of a consumer, you must incorporate unique learnings from all of a consumer’s interactions, across screens. These learnings collectively create a richer consumer profile that will significantly improve targeting capabilities, for both multi- and even single-device programs.
• Cross-Device Delivery: Leverage the best media in order to reach, connect and convert as the consumer migrates from device to device throughout the day. Right screen. Right place. Right time. Right message.
• Cross-Device Measurement: Every consumer action, regardless of the device it occurs on, sheds some light on the motivations and inclinations of that user. Leverage the individual and interconnected value of these insights to help shed light on the role each channel plays in a given user’s decisions.

Second, identify an app strategy. Four out of five mobile interactions take place in apps versus on the mobile web. With so much time being spent in-app, stakeholders must find ways to navigate the gaps in reporting and optimization that in-app engagement presents. It’s harder to measure marketing activity in apps, but no longer impossible. Luckily, new solutions now exist to bridge these gaps. These solutions are the key to unlocking the value of a consumer’s in-app activity. The resulting insights can be used to eliminate waste while driving greater optimization and scale.

Finally, consider the individual strengths of each type of device when developing and implementing your creative. To connect with consumers as they migrate between devices, you must make sure to deliver media that is optimized for whatever device it is being viewed on. Your strategy and execution should reflect a recognition of each device’s individual strengths:

• Smartphone Viewers should be engaged with messages that keep their out-and-about nature in mind. Examples: Motivate and facilitate action using store finders and discount offers.
• Tablet Users can be thoroughly engaged with attractive product visuals and other rich media experiences.
• PC Browsers have the easiest time entering data, so use these contacts to quickly link consumers to online purchase options.

There is no question that cross-device presents a wealth of opportunities for marketers and their brands. Take the time to identify these opportunities while devising your cross-device programs so that you may take full advantage of them.

Thanks to iMedia Connection for publishing this first. 

Perspectives and Swear Jars

Buzzword Bingo can be a rather frustrating thing for marketers trying to master every essential aspect of digital. Because personalization is such a hot topic, my boss Scott Eagle, CMO of Conversant, has issued his own take on what "personalized marketing" really means.

There are so many companies promulgating self-serving definitions that Scott decided to put a stake in the ground and put forward a comprehensive definition. This impassioned argument is provocatively titled "What the *!X&! does "personalized marketing really mean?" It's enough for me to put a quarter in the swear jar! ;-) But it's all to make an important point. 

In order to get maximum benefit from one-to-one marketing, we need to be vigilant in ensuring that whatever solution we choose truly delivers on the promise of personalization. That's what this paper is all about. 

Its a good and thought provoking read. Find the paper on SlideShare or our website. 

New Conversant Whitepaper on Cross-Device

One of the reasons why I so appreciate working at Conversant is the company's commitment to providing valuable, non-selly content to hep buyers at agencies and brand direct alike to make better decisions on the critical topics that can make a huge difference to their success.

Digital is or can seem mindbogglingly complicated, so inasmuch as Conversant, Inc. has strong expertise in the many technologies and innovations, we can help the industry make better decisions. Whether or not you buy from us, though of course I very much hope that you do. Cross-device is one of the topics where getting better information out to decision makers can make a big difference.

Conversant has just published a new paper on cross device that offers six simple tips or things to look for as you  contemplate your options. All of our content is free for download. You can do so on SlideShare or on the increasingly massive Insights and Ideas section of our website.

Improve Your Next Cross-Device Campaign by Following These Three Tips

Kurt Hawks, GM of Mobile for Conversant, penned a post that appeared today on MediaPost, offering three tips to driving better omni-channel marketing results.

The most interesting part to me is his appeal for brands to avail themselves of technologies that allow them to get granular action tracking in the mobile app environment. Right now, most brands spend a disproportionate share of their total spend on the mobile web versus in apps. Perhaps in part because in-app tracking is (well, used to be) so much tougher. But there are solutions now and they can enable brands to capitalize on the 44% of user time now spent in apps.

Do check out Kurt's post.

Mobile Travel Sites ~ Challenges and Opportunities

Laurie Sullivan at MediaPost delivered a great post this week about the state of mobile travel sites. Her analysis revealed that many travel sites aren't really optimized to deliver a rich mobile experience - this in a world where comScore is now reporting that 60% of Internet time now takes place on mobile devices. 

Also of interest in this piece were some new figures from a big piece of CJ Affiliate by Conversant research that showed remarkable growth in travel booking via mobile apps and click to call. Said Heather Pilat, VP of Analytics at CJ, 

Advertisers have the opportunity to pull off a marketing double-play by creating an engagement strategy that taps the trend for higher booking by promoting higher priced packages or hotel stays within a mobile environment. As the travel seasons winds down, advertisers should take a hard look at their organization’s data strategy. We find many companies still need to make some hard decisions about how they get data, analyze it and use it for customer engagement."

It's a good read. Check it out. 

Focus on the Person, Not the Device

My coleague Kurt Hawks did a great post for AdExchanger today. The focus is on the need to put person-first versus utilizing siloed user data. The key, according to Kurt, is to recognize that with comScore now reproting that 60% (!) of digital activity taking pace on smartphones and tablets, it is highly inadvisable to rely on PC behavioral data alone for targeting.

Even if you are buying media in a single channel, like PC or Mobile, you need to ensure that your media partner uses REAL-TIME cross-device data for user profiling and individualized target selection.

Check out the post here.