1.It's been three years since the pandemic, and it looks like some retailers won't be opening on Thanksgiving Day this year. Best Buy, Home Depot, JC Penney, Kohl’s and Macy’s will all be closed on Thanksgiving. Target announced last year that from 2021 on, the store would be closed on Thanksgiving Day. "What started as a temporary measure driven by the
pandemic is now our new standard — one that recognizes our ability to deliver on our guests' holiday wishes both within and well beyond store hours," said Target CEO Brian Cornell in a news release. Cornell added: "You don't have to wonder whether this is the last Thanksgiving you'll spend with family and friends for a while because Thanksgiving store hours are one thing we won't 'get back to' when the pandemic finally subsides." (MP)
2.TikTok
just launched an Audience Insights tool, and it's a whole new testing ground for your campaigns.TikTok's new tool can help you dive into users' specific interests, demographics, and other details that should help you structure your campaigns. It works like this: You select a campaign from the Ads Manager, then go to the "Reporting" section of the same page to find the Audience Insights filter. From there you can choose from a variety of categories such as age demographics and gender
splits; interest categories such as Food and Beverage; or interactions such as video, creator, or hashtag interactions. Once you've applied these filters properly, you can both validate your existing audience and find inspiration for tweaks or entirely new campaigns. So what are you waiting for? Start exploring!
3. In a world where technology is constantly moving forward, it's easy to feel like we're always on the cusp of something new and
exciting. But when it comes to e-commerce, the numbers suggest that growth is anything but explosive. In fact, Alibaba has reported a single-digit rise in quarterly revenue—falling below already low expectations—amid the current economic slowdown. Meanwhile, customer management revenue—accounting for 30% of the company's total revenue—fell 7% annually, which is the steepest-ever decline for the company. And at Amazon? Well… they've begun cutting jobs. Reports say it could be Amazon's
"largest workforce reduction" in history with over 10,000 people affected by layoffs. The company cited the "current macro-environment" as the main reason for these cuts, which come on top of other layoffs across major tech companies.
4. Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, has launched a major marketing campaign in response to the collapse of FTX and other companies in the crypto space. The campaign features Cristiano
Ronaldo as its star. "We are committed to addressing both the short-term and long-term needs of our customers," said Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao. "And we believe that Cristiano Ronaldo is the perfect spokesperson for this important mission."
5.The economic crisis may be taking its toll on consumer spending, but it’s not putting a damper on people’s dating lives. According to Tinder, paid subscriptions on the dating app actually rose 7% over the
summer until September. Still eager to find love, Match Group which owns popular dating apps such as Hinge and OKCupid reported sales of $810 million during the last quarter. However, the economic crisis was slowing in-app purchases in apps such as Plenty of Fish which caters for people with lower incomes.
Tinder, on the other hand, saw a rise in sales. According to Statista, in-app revenues were up across APAC, EMEA and NALA, reaching higher levels than even before the pandemic.
Revenues were highest during July and have been dipping slightly ever since.
6. Mastodon, the decentralized social network that’s increasingly being positioned as an alternative to Twitter, has eclipsed 1 million active monthly users.That’s according to CEO and lead developer Eugen Rochko, who revealed the milestone in a post on Monday morning. Germany-based Mastodon has experienced rapid growth since Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter, with
nearly half a million users joining the network since October 27. While a fraction of the size of Twitter’s 238 million daily active users, Mastodon’s user base remains on a steep upward trajectory, growing from 60-80 new user registrations per hour prior to October 27 to thousands of registrations per hour today. Twitter’s controversial new ownership — and recent product changes — have supercharged Mastodon’s expansion. Some users say that they were inspired to switch to Mastodon over
to concerns about how Twitter’s functionality may change under Musk’s control, while others joined as a form of protest against Twitter’s new paid verification scheme and Musk’s heavy-handed approach to moderating certain forms of satire. (TC)
7.Apple is slated to launch a new advertising network for live television, according to a recent report from Bloomberg. The company is said to be working with Major League Soccer as well as advertising
partners and sponsors ahead of the launch of its MLS partnership in February. The partnership will allow customers to sign up for a separate subscription to watch games on Apple TV, which differs from the strategy used so far with its MLB Friday Night Baseball partnership. Apple’s new live TV advertising efforts are being spearheaded by Todd Teresi, the company’s vice president of advertising platforms. According to Bloomberg’s report today, Apple plans to run ads in three different
tiers of their offerings: games streamed for all users for free, games offered to TV+ subscribers, and those users subscribed to the dedicated MLS package. (925apple)
8.While the midterms didn't turn out the way many Republicans had hoped, it turns out that right-leaning news on mobile devices was up 86% compared to its highest point during the 2020 presidential elections.
This is according to an analysis of mobile usage trends
by mobile insights consulting firm Global Wireless Solutions (GWS). The report is based on GWS' panel of 200,000 adult smartphone users, with 54 million data points analyzed daily. It found that as of a week prior to the November elections, consumption of right-leaning news on mobile devices was up 86% compared to its highest point during the 2020 presidential elections. In contrast, mobile consumption of left-leaning media was down by 23% during that timeframe, and had lagged behind
right-leaning outlets since November 2021. Due to the strength of the right-leaning trend, at its peak during the midterm election cycle, total mobile news consumption was up 18% compared to its high point in January 2021, with Americans spending 93 minutes per week on this activity." (MP)
9. Even though it’s harder than ever for marketers to get customer data, customers demand the same high level of relevance when they hear from companies.
“You have to be able to work with third-party providers or make sure that you have a robust first-party internal identity resolution strategy to be able to confidently resolve and standardize your zero- and first-party data,” said Kelly Leger, managing director for Deloitte Digital. Due to the depreciation of third-party cookies and new regulations that govern how companies obtain permission to use customer data, many of the usual streams of data are being interrupted, causing
signal loss. “Because there will be disparate customer data sets out there and signal loss will be occurring, you have to make sure that your customer data is shored up,” Leger said. The first-party and zero-party data that your company has needs to be standardized and cleansed. Marketers need easy access to this existing data.
10. Email teams in technology companies have a twofold challenge: They need to write educated emails, and they have
to deliver content that can stand out among the noise.Yet, according to a new global study by Foundry, email teams are up for the job. Of the information technology decision-makers (ITDMs) polled, 91% are willing to register/share their information with vendors to gain access to content, up from 87% in 2021 and 83% in 2019. Yet 90% say it’s tough to find high-quality content, versus 86% in 2019. Among enterprise respondents, 50% describe the task as challenging, compared to 42% at
SMBs.Despite that, 48% have downloaded work-related content with value over the past 12 months, up from 41% in the prior year and 38% in 2019. But they have higher expectations. For instance, 97% of IT buyers are interested in custom-tailored content based on: industry (54%), the technology platform(s) already installed at organization (49%), company size (31%).
10. In today’s fast and furious world of omnipresent advertising, one thing is
certain: There are exponentially more opportunities to experience and interact with brands than ever before. As a result, the brand relationship is more and more like a personal relationship. Customers want to befriend brands that fulfill their needs and come through consistently. Fun is paramount, and disappointment can ruin what would otherwise be a beautiful relationship. This poses a challenge to companies and brands that desperately want to capture just a few seconds of interest
with the hope that a potential customer might tap, scroll, click, read, sign up or download to eventually make a purchase. In other words: marketing budgets must be adapted to account for the high impact and importance of all interactive components and execution. Branding agencies have a unique opportunity to serve as the agency of record for clients who want consistent messaging across all platforms in an age when consumers now see an average of 10,000 ads per day—talk about media bombardment!
Getting an advertising message through the clutter is tougher than it’s ever been. (ClickZ)
11. You can't ignore TikTok. The app is already taking over the world, and it's only going to get bigger.According to a new report by Omdia, TikTok's global advertising revenue will surpass the combined ad revenues of Meta platforms and YouTube, and Netflix will have won a small but growing share in the online video advertising space by 2027.
The researcher’s new global and media entertainment trends report estimates that global online video advertising will rise from $189 billion in 2022 to $331 billion in 2027 — exceeding subscription video-on-demand revenues of $127 billion by 2.6 times, and TV advertising’s $159 billion by 2 times. TikTok is projected to increase its share from 15% to 24%, and its Chinese Byte Dance-owned sibling app Douyin is projected to up its share from 7% to 14%. Combined, their share will rise from 22% to
37%, Omdia Senior Director Maria Rua Aguete reported during the Media & Entertainment Leaders Summit in London.