Apsalar Introduces Apsalar Audiences for Facebook

This important new Apsalar service enables marketers to identify segments of app users and use them as Facebook Custom Audiences for precision targeting across the world’s leading social network.

We’re excited to announce the launch of Apsalar Audiences for Facebook, a new service that enables our clients to easily define and export app user segments for use as Facebook Custom Audiences. Using these Custom Audiences, brands can connect and engage with these known customers in advertising programs across Facebook and Facebook Audience Network.

Apsalar Audiences for Facebook empowers marketers to define groups of their app users based upon any consumer action that they track using Apsalar Attribution. App users are identified based on device advertising IDs like IDFA, IDFV or Android Advertising ID.

Once the audiences are created, they can then be seamlessly delivered to Facebook Ads Manager as a Custom Audience, so that the individuals can be targeted with specific creative messages tailored to their needs. Delivering these audiences is made easy through Apsalar’s platform integration with Facebook.

“Presenting tailored messages to consumers based upon their interests and behaviors has never been more important,” said Michael Oiknine, Cofounder and CEO of Apsalar. “By enabling our clients to select specific app users and use them as Custom Audiences, this new service is an important new way we help our clients maximize ROI for their marketing investments.”

Apsalar Audience for Facebook enables an unprecedented level of targeting specificity, and can support a broad range of marketing objectives. For example:

• To cost effectively drive incremental revenue, marketers can identify their existing customers and use Facebook to drive incremental purchases.
• To address cart abandons, brands can create a segment of recent cart abandoners and use it as a Custom Audience, delivering special creative messages reminding them to return to the app to finish their transactions.
• To drive first purchases, app marketers can identify app users that have not yet transacted and leverage the power of the Facebook as a marketing platform to reach these specific individuals with special messaging and offers.
• To drive incremental purchases, a marketer could identify all people who have purchased items in a single category and then market related items to them across Facebook.
• To reactivate former customers, a brand can create an audience of people who have not used the app in N days, and then use it as a Facebook Custom Audience to deliver ads that foster app relaunches.

Apsalar Audiences for Facebook make it easy for app marketers to focus on specific groups of app users with accuracy or scale. By creating a Facebook Custom Audience using device advertising ids, brands can now deliver the right message to the right individuals with remarkable precision and accuracy.

“Custom Audiences empowers any marketer to reach customers they already know through Facebook,” said Stefano Menti, of Facebook. “This new Apsalar service will help its clients leverage Custom Audiences to better deliver on their key business objectives.”

The Apsalar Audiences for Facebook service is available to Apsalar clients worldwide.

Ad Fraud Made Easy to Understand, Even If It Still is An Unpleasant Topic

I enjoy putting together little digital education pieces, and hope you find them useful. In my view, our industry can be so insular that we forget that not everyone has time or inclination to study every digital topic on 9 different levels. Marketing generalists especially are inundated with info, and so I thought that simplifying some of these hot topics might be useful for some.

Anyway, today’s topic is ad fraud!

What is Ad Fraud?

Ad fraud is the practice of deliberately attempting to drive ad impressions that have no potential of being seen by a real person. Ad Fraud is a crime – it is deliberate, premeditated, and designed to rob advertisers of value for their advertising spend.

Much ad fraud is driven by bots – software designed to automate repetitive tasks online. Of course, not all bots are bad. Not by a longshot. Search engines, for example, uses bots to examine millions of pages and apps every day to understand what content they offer. They use this information so they can deliver the best possible results with their search engines.

Such bots are obviously not malicious. They are not designed to defraud advertisers, though it is possible that a search engine bot can trigger an ad impression while doing its job.

Bot-driven ad fraud is different. These bots are deliberately developed to load ad views so that the criminal entity earns advertising dollars.

Net net, impressions delivered to bots are not necessarily ad fraud. It is the malicious intent that makes some of them fraudulent. Non-malicious bot impressions are better addressed under the topic of viewability.

Some Examples of How Fraud is Perpetrated

There are a multitude of ad fraud tactics – here are just a couple of examples:

1.    Bots that secretly take over consumer PCs and spawn page views unseen by the user.

2.     Networks of hijacked computers (“botnets”) that fake consumer traffic. Virtual machines that mimic consumer PCs and rapidly spawn thousands of page views.

3.    Videos that automatically play but which are extremely small or even invisible on the page.

4.    Software that emulates multiple clicks every time a consumer makes a real click

Ad fraud, and the fight against it, is a continuing arms race, with each protection breakthrough spawning a new approach to perpetrating fraud.

How Prevalent is Ad Fraud

All researchers who have studied ad fraud have identified it as a significant amount of total web traffic. The Association of National Advertisers (ANA and online fraud detection firm, White Ops, conducted one of the largest industry studies, in which they found that 11% of display and 23% of video impressions were caused by bots and botnets. Another leading industry association, the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB), stated that almost 36% of web traffic was fake.

Detecting and Preventing Ad Fraud

The best defense against ad fraud is information combined with tools to take action in intelligent ways.

On the PC web, media companies are using strategies to identify bots by, for example, treating thousands of impressions in a short period from a PC or group of PCs as suspect. Non-human activity often “looks” different when analysts examine it closely.

In the app world, where my company Apsalar plays, we help clients identify and combat ad fraud through a variety of methods. One of the most important is by helping clients identify vendors that drive app installs that don’t later lead to app loads and in-app purchases.

While not every app legitimately downloaded is later used, vendors with a high incidence of fraudulent activity drive much higher proportions of nonproductive downloads. So much app media is purchased on a cost per install basis, so this is important insight.

When clients are empowered to see which vendors and users are real people and which are likely fraudulent, our industry does better. When brands don’t have data or partners to help defend their investments against fraud, the risk is significantly higher. Apsalar is constantly developing new ways to detect and prevent fraud. For more information on our approaches and the larger issue of fraud, get in touch with us.

And you can download a PDF of this content, as well as marketing basics topics, in our “Take 5″ section of the Apsalar website. The idea of Take 5 is to create short papers that explain a seemingly complex digital topic – in less than 5 minutes of reading. Hope you like ‘em!

A Primer on Android Advertising ID

Since yesterday’s post, an introduction to IDFA, generated so much interest, we’ll continue the education theme this week by providing an introduction to Android Advertising ID.

Android Advertising ID is a device identifier for advertisers to use in anonymously understanding user activity on Android devices. An Android Advertising ID is somewhat analogous to an advertising cookie, in that it enables an advertiser to understand that a user of a particular phone has taken an action, like a click or an app install. Android Advertising IDs take the place of cookies in mobile advertising delivered to Android devices because cookies are problematic in the mobile world. For more information on why cookies don’t work in mobile, refer to our “Take 5″ eguide entitled, Why Do They Say Cookies Don’t Work in Mobile?

Advertisers want to be able to associate advertising actions to specific, anonymized individuals. Android Advertising IDs (and their iPhone siblings, IDFAs) help an advertiser identify the specific phone where the ad action takes place. Third-party cookies, which are commonly used on the PC web for tracking, tend to have short life spans – anything from 1 to 30 days on average.

By contrast, the Android Advertising ID doesn’t change unless a user decides to change it in their phone settings. Few consumers feel a need to take this action, so Android Advertising IDs can offer a better foundation for a persistent and anonymized consumer profile. Also, an advertising ID is the same for all of the apps and browsers on a phone, so it can be a powerful way to aggregate customer behavior across all of these disconnected environments. Thus, device IDs like Android Advertising ID and IDFA are very useful as the foundation for customer profiles in data management platforms, or DMPs. They enable a brand to accurately aggregate data about a customer to a specific, anonymized profile.

Before Android Advertising ID, advertisers could track actions on Android phones using a device identifier called Android ID (or ANDI.) The big advantage for the Advertiser ID over an ANDI is that it provides consumer choice. An Android ID is a permanent device number, and sharing it could not be turned off. By contrast, users have the option to opt out of Android Advertising ID tracking, or to change their ID periodically. If an app is downloaded from Google Play, it has an Android Advertising ID. If the app is downloaded from another store, tracking and measurement companies like Apsalar are permitted to track using the ANDI, but must not connect the Android Advertising ID to the ANDI.

When consumers take actions as a result of ads, like clicking a banner, playing a video, or installing an app, media companies can pass the Android Advertising ID with information about the consumer action that took place. Most media companies do pass Android Advertising IDs. Some media companies, including some large social networks, do not pass device IDs to advertisers, but do allow you to target specific IDs within their properties. Apsalar helps advertisers by associating in-app and omni-channel consumer actions to these semi-permanent identifiers. This helps them create powerful customer profiles and rich audience understanding, in addition to juxtaposing the relative performance of different media vendors. The Android Advertiser ID also enables an advertiser to individually target audiences of specific individuals that have taken actions in the past. This sort of individual targeting is becoming increasingly common as programmatic media and social media advertising grow in popularity.

You can download a PDF of this content here.

All About IDFA

One of the most common questions we’re asked at Apsalar is to explain IDFA, the advertising ID in iOS (iPhone) phones. Given that, I thought I’d put out a short and simple explanation here.

IDFA is the abbreviation for identifier for advertisers on iPhones. An IDFA is somewhat analogous to an advertising cookie, in that it enables an advertiser to understand that a user of a particular phone has taken an action like a click or an app install. IDFAs take on the tracking role for mobile that cookies play in the PC web because cookies are problematic in the mobile world. For more information on why cookies don’t work in mobile, download Why Do They Say Cookies Don’t Work in Mobile? from the resources section on our site.

Semi-Persistent Device Identifiers

Advertisers are naturally interested in understanding the anonymized individuals that take advertising actions. IDFAs (and their Android siblings, Android Advertising IDs) help an advertiser identify the specific phone where the ad action takes place.

Third party cookies, which are commonly used on the PC web for tracking, tend to have short life spans – anything from 1 to 30 days on average. By contrast, the IDFA doesn’t change unless a user decides to change it in their phone settings. Few consumers feel a need to take this action, so IDFAs can offer a better foundation for a persistent and anonymized consumer profile.

Also, an IDFA device advertising ID is the same for all of the apps and browsers on a phone, so it can be a powerful way to aggregate customer behavior across all of these disconnected environments. Thus, device IDs like IDFA are very useful as the foundation for customer profiles in data management platforms, or DMPs. They enable a brand to accurately aggregate data about a customer to a specific, anonymized profile.

UDID and IDFA

Before IDFA, advertisers could track actions on iPhones using a device identifier called UDID or universal device ID. The big advantage that IDFA offers over UDID is consumer choice. Apple introduced IDFA to offer consumers a choice when it came to interest advertising and tracking. A UDID was a permanent device number, and sharing it could not be turned off, whereas users have the option to opt out of IDFA tracking, or to change their IDFA periodically.

IDFA is the only ID that Apple allows advertisers to use to understand the advertising actions on its phones. This reflects their commitment to the ideas of privacy and choice, while also enabling a robust advertising industry in which brands target likely responders and drive revenue for app and mobile web publishers.

Using IDFA

When consumers take actions as a result of ads, like clicking a banner, playing a video, or installing an app, media companies can pass the IDFA with information about the consumer action that took place as a result of the advertising. The IDFA enables an advertiser to individually target specific individuals that have taken actions in the past. This sort of individual targeting is becoming increasingly common as programmatic media and social media advertising grow in popularity.

IDFV

You may also occasionally hear about an ID called IDFV, This stands for Identifier for Vendors. An IDFV is assigned and shared by all apps from the same company. Sometimes companies with multiple apps base their marketing efforts and analyses on IDFV, because they only change if a user uninstalls all apps from a particular vendor.

You can find more specifics about IDFA here and here.

First-(Party) Things First

Today’s eMarketer article on data shows that marketers are increasingly convinced of the importance and efficacy of first-party data as a driver of improved marketing performance. That’s great news because it shows that the market is fast coming to appreciate how important customer signals are for the future of marketing.

There are many types of information that companies can collect about their customers. Here are a number of examples:

• Website registration data
• Past online purchase information for customers
• Past in-store purchase information that can be traced to a specific individual, using a credit card record, cheque, registration form or loyalty card/program
• PC web browsing and behavior data
• Mobile web browsing and behavior data
• In-app browsing and behavior data
• Email CRM program email addresses and records of email interactions (opens, clicks, send to a friend, etc.)
• Customer interactions with your social media presences
• Call center records

It’s easy to see how, collectively, these varied sources of data can provide a foundation for understanding individual customer behavior or aggregated audience characteristics.

Taking ownership of a brand’s first-party data is an absolutely critical task for today’s marketer. It is only through collecting and interpreting this information that a brand can take a truly customer-first approach to its customer engagement efforts. And study after study show that there is no better predictor of future customer actions than past customer actions.

One of the most exciting aspects of a first-party data strategy is that it helps right-size the role that surrogate marketing metrics like demographics play in a brand’s targeting efforts. For decades, marketers have used demographics like age and gender and family status as primary drivers of media and other targeting. And demos were very powerful. But while demographics can and probably should play a role in marketing in future years, it’s important to recognize that they are simply tools to focus dollars on groups that seem to have a higher propensity than average to buy a product. Now that we can understand the actions and characteristics of each buyer, we can take a more reasoned and individualized approach to marketing communications in which demographics like age and gender play some role, though perhaps not the primary role.

The Many Strengths of Mobile CRM

Marketers have always loved the strategic promise of CRM – the idea that we can actively manage our relationship with each customer based upon her wants, needs and preferences. But historically there was often a gap between that promise and the marketing reality for most brands. For much of the 2000s and even into the 2010s, CRM was often used as a euphemism for weekly or even daily email blasts to an entire database. While there were some companies that took a more thoughtful and strategic approach to CRM, many simply used it to describe blanketing inboxes with emails. One size fits all emails.

Fortunately, that’s changing pretty quickly. While some brands still view email blasts as the alpha and omega of CRM, more and more brands are asking people what kinds of messages they want to receive, how often, and in what format. That’s fantastic news for the customer. And for any brand looking to maximize sales and customer engagement.

In 2015, some of the most intriguing CRM developments relate to using smartphones as a primary CRM delivery vehicle. At conferences and in trade journals we’re hearing the term Mobile CRM with greater frequency. Let’s talk a little about what the term means – and should mean – as consumers spend progressively more and more of their connected time on phones rather than PCs.

First Things First: CRM

CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management — a way of planning, executing, delivering and measuring your brand’s relationship with its customers. CRM platforms or tools use technology to effectively and efficiently manage the data and insights you have about each customer, so that you can have an orchestrated and appealing set of interactions with each person.

Mobile CRM

A little digging showed us that Mobile CRM is a term currently being used in two different ways. Business-to-Business CRM solutions often use it to describe ways that salespeople can interact with customer and prospect data. The focus is on how the seller accesses the information, not on how messages are delivered to customers.

The way we use the term at Apsalar is to describe coordinated communications programs with consumers, using mobile-based communications vehicles like:

• Push notifications
• Mobile site personalization
• Mobile app personalization
• App message centers
• SMS/text messages
• Offers in/to ewallets
• And, yes, emails

Why Interest in Mobile CRM is Growing

The latest consumer behavioral data show that the consumer spends more than 60% of their connected time on mobile devices. Given this, it makes sense to focus on delivering CRM messages to consumers where they spend the most time. That doesn’t negate the potential value of emails opened on PCs. But it does suggest that those emails alone aren’t enough.

In addition, consumers generally carry their cellphones everywhere, and are within a few feet of them for the vast majority of each day. This is very different from their relationships with PCs. By tailoring a CRM program to a consumer’s mobile availability, brands can often find far more and far richer moments of opportunity in which to deliver their messages.

Using Mobile CRM, brands can also capitalize on the consumers’ ability to take action at virtually any time and from virtually anywhere. This means that they can drive more impulse purchases, and even deliver special communications based upon where a consumer is at times throughout the day.

Mobile CRM and Apps

Recent comScore data show that consumers spend the majority of their connected time in mobile apps. Given this, and given that app experiences tend to be richer, more engaging, and more entertaining than other web content, brands can deliver more effective messages in these environments. For app publishers, mobile CRM makes sense because the consumer is already using the device with the app on it. Therefore it is easier to drive app launches and other consumer actions with mobile CRM than with PC-based CRM.

—–

At Apsalar we don’t provide Mobile CRM services. As part of our vast network of partners, we work closely with Mobile CRM companies by providing data to power customer engagement platforms. Our focus is on collecting, managing and enabling brands to action customer data via the platforms of their choice. Mobile CRM – like any true CRM program – uses data as its foundation. The more of the right consumer data in a CRM platform, the better your CRM results.

The Apsalar DMP provides customer behavioral and demographic data, improves and enhances customer profiles, and uses device advertising IDs to seamlessly integrate with virtually any CRM or Mobile CRM platform on the market.  Our historical strength in collecting and measuring app marketing activity and in-app events provides the mobile app data that is absolutely essential to truly understand customer behavior on phones or in aggregate. If CRM is something you want to know more about, make sure that getting the right data to maximize the effectiveness of your CRM program is a high priority.

Published first on the Apsalar website. 

Joy, Pain and Everything In Between

It's been a week of incredible joy, terrible pain, and astounding surprises.

There's this:

I am 51. Knowing how far America was from this when I was born, I never ever ever expected this to happen in my lifetime. Let alone the White House lights. ;-) Ever. If you want some sense of how far the nation has come, I suggest you check out The Boys in the Band,  

Having just read Antonin Scalia's dissent, I can only chuckle a little and think back to my 10th grade history teacher, Caroline Loose, who said,

"When people complain about judicial activists, what they really mean is people that disagree with them."

Judge Scalia, I forgive you. The reference will make more sense in a paragraph or two. ;-)

And a reminder that the people who got America started on the road to this amazing moment were a bunch of drag queens and other "misfits". All hail the misfits!

And then there is the amazing eloquence of the community of faith of the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston. I still feel deeply affected by what's happened in South Carolina. It's hard to explain why exactly. These things seem to occur in America every couple of weeks.  But the idea that a man would enter a prayer meeting, be welcomed and asked to participate, and then shoot those in attendance. It boggles the mind. 

I think what REALLY gets to me about this is that the AME Church was created because blacks were unwelcome in the Methodist Church. This was not a scism driven by theological differences but rather because of hatred and prejudice. And, round about 200 years later, by which time surely that sort of misguided thinking should be understood and regretted, 9 people were shot in cold blood. During a PRAYER MEETING! Now, the UMC didn't pull the trigger. That's not what I mean. The UMC is quite progressive as Protestant denominations go. And I believe that the AME and UMC have ecumenical agreements in a step toward one Christian community. But you  get the idea.

And a couple days later, their friends and families forgave. (!!!)

The horror of the shootings. And the profound and astounding forgiveness given by the families and friends of those that were lost. The President's eulogy is filled with the pain and the hope and optimism that the families and friends display every day of their lives. God Bless you all! You are an example to everyone on earth. Tunisia, France, and the mosque attack in Kuwait today give us a sense of the evil that men can do. Its important, though, that we remember what love can do as well.


 

What's So Compelling About Mobile Marketing Automation

Mobile marketing automation is becoming increasingly popular around the world. For those that are a little less familiar, you probably know all about regular marketing automation. It uses technology to streamline, simplify and automate digital marketing tasks. Automation platforms can be used for audience-based communications, but many of their most interesting applications are in triggered personalized communications.

What is Mobile Marketing Automation?
Mobile consumer interactions are particularly suited to marketing automation because people keep their phones with them all day, and brands can identify and leverage moments of opportunity as they occur.  As brand attention to mobile has increased, and as new mobile marketing methods have been developed, more and more brands are deploying mobile marketing automation solutions. This is particularly true for app-based businesses.

Marketing Automation and Triggers
Marketing automation is often driven by individual customers taking specific actions that trigger some sort of targeted marketing event. Some examples include:

• When a user puts items in a cart but abandons before buying
• When an app user gets within a certain radius of a retail location
• If someone hasn’t visited a site or app in a certain amount of time
• When someone searches for a certain class of items on a site, like airline tickets

For instance, a person who abandons a full shopping cart might receive and email or push message reminder to return and finish their transaction.

This, marketing automation creates individualized marketing experiences at a scale that simply wasn’t possible before. Brands create business rules based upon triggers, and then is able to deliver personalized marketing experiences without significant human effort.

Example Touchpoints for Mobile Marketing Automation
Mobile technology now offers a vast arrays of potential communications paths to leverage with mobile marketing automation. Here are the most possible:

• Push notifications
• Emails
• SMS/texts
• Message center communications
• mWallet offers
• In-app personalized experiences
• Mobile site personalization
• Landing page personalization

In each case a trigger event could lead an automation platform to deliver some message, offer or content via this communications vehicle.

Personal messages. On the most personal of connected devices. Nice, huh?

Mobile Marketing Automation Use Cases
Marketing automation is an incredibly versatile tool with which to drive customer actions, especially for e-commerce and m-commerce businesses. The following chart outlines a variety of consumer actions (or…inactions) and how marketing automation and the delivery of focused messages and offers could help turn these actions into business opportunities for a brand.

How Apsalar and its Mobile-First DMP Improve Marketing Automation

The Apsalar DMP helps make data, profiles and audiences available to marketing automation tools more quickly and easily. By measuring in-app customer events and combining that data with mobile-web and other first party data sets, we create incredibly rich 360 profiles and can deliver real-time data on customer events. Most DMPs have little or no visibility into customer events inside apps. Apsalar, by contrast, enables you to measure any type of consumer event for rich insight and granular marketing automation programs. Our DataSync offering makes it possible to easily and securely share event data with leading mobile marketing automation and web-based automation products right from the Apsalar interface.

Nine MCommerce Apps That Are Definitely Worth a Look!

It used to be that gaming was the.. err... name of the game in the mobile app business. However, while games continue to be incredibly strong players in the battle for app mindshare, retailers and other direct selling businesses are gaining traction in the app space. One reason for that growing success is the creativity and inventiveness being shown in app development. Many such "m-commerce" apps are leveraging the power of the medium to enhance and even transform shopping and buying, right there on the small screen.

Making shopping more appealing is what it takes to be a "need to see app" in my book. Whether that's in thinking of new ways to merchandise, or simply eliminating the friction points in m-commerce, a must-see m-commerce app sweats both the big stuff and the small stuff to make mobile shopping more of a joy.

Here then are nine apps that are changing the face of selling in unique an inventive ways -- ways that are definitely worth a looksee.

The Hunt

Why it's a need to see

The core premise of The Hunt is to leverage the eyes and ears of its very passionate community of tog-forward users to help you find specific fashions. For example, here's a search that one person posted for a must-have iPhone case:

Users can ask for help finding "this exactly," "similar to this," or for those who are feeling particularly fashion-challenged, send a "style me" plea that asks users to find them items for a particular occasion or an overall makeover.

I'm thinking that there are like 19 million different ways for the creators to make money on this concept. But what I like most about it is the sense of purposeful community. It gives people a chance to connect over things, show off their eagle eyes, and even create their own flavor of "celebrity." That, and it takes impulse purchases to a whole other level.

Ralph Lauren

Why it's a need to see

Now here's a brand that knows how to leverage its extensive content to great advantage. The Ralph Lauren app created a rich brand experience by showcasing its goods in the context of total looks, runway footage, backstage vids, and other content features that keep you reading, watching, and wanting more.

All of the different flavors of Ralph Lauren are interwoven here, as well, and distinctive features like a focus on craftsmanship add to the sense of quality and luxury. What was most appealing about all this intermingling of content is that it really gives you a sense of what is possible in terms of brand immersion, and why interactive media is about so so so much more than the ability to "buy now." I was a bit skeptical about the need to visit a mobile site to buy, but to its credit, the app does a great job making that transition as seamless as possible. 

Wanelo

Why it's a need to see

When I first saw Wanelo.com, I remember thinking that I'd be hard-pressed to find a more addictive shopping experience. The premise is in the name there WAnt, NEed, LOve -- where users can explore the products of more than 350,000 sellers and get fed "like" products based upon their passions and preferences. The Pinteresty web experience is well suited to a mobile app, which uses a Tinder-like swipe right motion to record your likes. My own penchant for dress shoes, for example, was instantly rewarded with lots of related eye candy. And this community is plugged in and participating -- it isn't unusual for them to leave thousands of comments about a popular item.

Shopping is a snap once you add a payment card, and the range of goods offers something for virtually every price point. Members can create feeds of their liked merchandise and achieve a sort of celebrity by creating a signature style that others wish to follow. It's fun to follow friends' feeds, as well as feeds of people who have that certain je ne c'est quoi.  Trending items are also particularly addictive feature area, where you can restrict the items shown by price point. The Wanelo mobile experience isn't so much different on mobile as clearly intended for it.

Gilt

Why it's a need to see

I've been a fan of the Gilt app for a long time because it captures the spirit of that property so well and provides so many avenues in to buying -- and buying more. The basic premise of Gilt -- a member's-only community where you can get the world's best brands for up to 70 percent off – is enhanced with many paths to purchase. I like the rich designer previews it offers before each sale, and how well the app performs in all areas. As we all know, the performance bar is very high in the app arena, and Gilt always delivers.

Another great thing about the app -- Gilt knows when rich production values enhance an experience, and when they would just get in the way. It calibrates things just right.

RueLaLa

Why it's a need to see

RueLaLa also uses the private sale model and has a distinctive look and feel that is both inviting and intuitive. Its navigation system also quickly gets you drilled down into the right product categories without your losing a sense of where you are in the overall experience. Buying is extremely fast, easy, and clean. RueLaLa has also prominently built sharing and calendaring into its functionality, and its "boutiques" section helps simulate that "couture floor" of retail department store shopping.

Barney's NY

Why it's a need to see
What stands out about this app is that its boiled down the browsing process and product information to its minimum "essence." When you explore products, the information and product shots available are attractive and intuitively organized. Most products have multiple views, and detailed sizing info is available almost everywhere. My suspicion is that this app will be expanding to include a lot more content in the coming months, but in the meantime it's created a really tight and "frictionless" buy process. It's just delightfully simple. While I focused on examining the iPhone version, the iPad version debuted to strong reviews as well.

Peach

Why it's a need to see

The premise of Peach is built around nine-minute auctions that offer a significant savings over retail on luxury goods. Users place bids and get immediate feedback about their bid rank in this fast-paced environment that takes the eBay auction and adds plenty of drama for everyone involved, not just two people tit-for-tat outbidding one another. That "democratic" tension keeps more people plugged into the auction, I expect, as must the incredibly short duration of the offer versus traditional online auctions.

The experience is sort of dreamy and fluid, and the imagery and product information first rate -- as befits a high end goods seller. One of my favorite touches is its expression of the spend more save more mantra of the power shopper. Every time you adjust your bid you get immediate feedback on your savings, which -- not that I know myself you understand, but a friend, yeah that's right, a friend -- tells me it keeps you bidding even when the remaining savings aren't huge.

Drync

image: http://www.imediaconnection.com/images/content/5Dryinc.jpg

Why it's a need to see

What's compelling about this app is the brilliant interweaving of expert and community reviews, and the ability to get wine recommendations based upon the wines that you know you already like. It knows what you like because you build your cellar in the same way GoodReads has you build a shelf. Ultimately it's a store, but you'd never guess that by your experience wandering its many sections, features, and reviews. You can also make purchases through the app for home delivery.

Being able to scan your own collection gives you an easy way to demonstrate the sorts of wine you like quickly and easily, so the service can provide great value right from the outset.

Neiman Marcus

Why it's a need to see

Neiman Marcus has captured the spirit of its ultra-affluent variety-seeker clientele by weaving merchandise into really compelling original content. I also love how it uses the app to better connect customer with associates, with experiences like an ability to FaceTime your favorite store personnel and even get your dressing room pre-stocked with goodies you want to try. For a seller on commission, this must be a godsend. In short, they do a fantastic job of weaving app features into real world shopping, providing an additive experience on both sides of that equation. I'm also really impressed by their blog, inside reports from designers, runway vids, and more!

Thanks to iMediaConnection for publishing this first!