蘑菇AV

Follow the leader: Fast-fashion companies like Boohoo and Zara began implementing returns fees earlier this year in the UK. (But beware of this strategy, as it may result in customer blowback.). Ahead of the holidays, Walmart has added curbside returns and returns pickup from home to its offerings, as well as extending its returns policy through January 31, 2023.

In the UK, X鈥檚 total revenues, which include revenues from non-ad products, plummeted by 66.3% YoY in 2023, according to financial filings made by X in April 2025. Total headcount in the UK also fell from 399 to 114 that year due to Musk鈥檚 cost-cutting measures. Marketers in the UK tend to be more concerned about brand safety and suitability than those in the US.

So it's a Great British Bake Off style episode you'll be pleased to learn, or not, but you have no choice. In today's show, our takers or bakers will be cooking up two trends, one social, one creator for 2025. We'll start with the social trend for our mains. Very clever. And then the creator trend as dessert. So social trends is where we begin. These will be our mains dishes.

For example, Ultimate Products, a UK-based company selling branded kitchen and laundry products, stated it saw an increase of over 90% in sales growth in May 2022 YoY as a result of using eBay Advanced campaigns and getting involved in whole catalog coupons. The eventual death of third-party cookies isn鈥檛 new, and first-party data has been a hot topic for industry insiders for years.

UK food price inflation is hitting record highs鈥攂ut grocery sales are flat. Faced with rising bills, consumers are changing shopping habits to keep spending in check.

On today's podcast episode, in our "Retail Me This, Retail Me That" segment, we discuss the differences between how US and UK consumers shop for groceries. Then, for "Pop-Up Rankings," we rank two grocery stores doing digital well, two taking an alternate approach, and why both can work. Join our analyst Sara Lebow as she hosts analysts Blake Droesch and Carina Perkins.

Approximately 1,000 respondents were surveyed in each country: Australia, Brazil, China, France, Germany, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, the UK and the US.

In its latest push to expand its US ecommerce marketplace assortment from 170 million items to 200 million items, it鈥檚 been recruiting international sellers based in the UK, Canada, and India to join the platform, per an August report by Chain Store Age.

On today鈥檚 podcast, we discuss the 蘑菇AV report, 9 Pivotal Shifts in AI, Regulation, and Advertising That Will Change the Business Landscape. Our analysts will compete in the Great Behind The Numbers Take Off 鈥� Top Trends edition, borrowing from the television show, The Great British Bake Off. In the Take Off, we will talk in-depth about how retail media, social and AI will undercut traditional search and will governments protect children from digital ad giants. Listen to the conversation with Senior Director of Podcasts and host Marcus Johnson, Senior Analyst Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf, and Analyst Bill Fisher. Listen everywhere and watch on YouTube and Spotify.

The product is now sold in 55 countries and available at retailers like Walmart, The Home Depot, and Amazon. The nature of social media virality is fickle, and The Pink Stuff may need a plan for when the buzz fades. 鈥淭he goal should be loyalty, not virality,鈥� Marina Cooley, a marketing professor at Emory University, told The New York Times.

UK-based specialty retailer Veronica Beard ran a dedicated clienteling program last September to support its fall releases. The retailer found that every fourth interaction between an associate and a customer led to a successful sale, resulting in a 35% conversion rate. Of those sales, the majority (87%) were in-store.

Boots is doing this by leaning heavily in the resiliency of the beauty category, having opened 170 premium beauty halls across the UK and Ireland. In addition to being home to a wider range of brands, the beauty halls host discovery areas and consultation spaces, offering treatments, advice, and demos.

VMware, which has more than 500,000 customers鈥攊ncluding the big three in cloud, Amazon, Microsoft, and Google鈥攗nlocks the growing edge and IoT segment for Broadcom. Building an IoT and edge-computing giant: The combination of Broadcom鈥檚 mobile phone and telecom network chips and VMware鈥檚 software positions Broadcom as a leader in data center and cloud-computing solutions.

Several global fintechs began using Visa Direct last quarter, including bKash in Bangladesh and GoHenry in the UK. The company also expanded Cybersource, its fraud detection solution, through tie-ups with issuers in Germany and Saudi Arabia. Inflation likely also played a role in Visa鈥檚 performance, but to a lesser extent because price increases have cooled in recent months.

TikTok Shop in the UK could be an indicator of what to expect in the US. Low sales, as well as consumer complaints about counterfeit goods and poor shipping experiences, have led UK brands and influencers to lose interest in TikTok Shop (despite being offered cash incentives), per the Financial Times.

We're in the US next where Amazon is supercharging its FASST offering. Earlier this year, Amazon launched Fire TV channels, its new hub for free ad supported streaming TV. They had some big names to help them with the launch too. Here's Martha Stewart explaining her involvement. Martha Stewart:. But doesn't stop there.

Many consumers in Latin America now start on retailers鈥� digital properties to research products, find inspiration, and search for deals鈥攁 shift also seen in countries like the US, the UK, and France. Mainstream search engines鈥� dominance is no more.

The move can help Block compete more aggressively with PayPal, whose Venmo already lets users make payments at popular retailers like Amazon. It may also help increase Cash App adoption: We expect 47.8 million US adults will use Cash App by the end of 2022, per our forecasts. It was noticeably quieter about cryptocurrencies in the second half of 2022.

Interesting to hear about the loyalty data there, because I know that's something that's certainly big in the UK and maybe Europe. Carina, anything to add on that? Carina Perkins:. Yeah, so one of our big retail media players in the UK is Tesco. It launched Tesco Media Insight in November 2021.

Quality issues and plagiarism are potential weaknesses of AI, according to 65% of US and UK content and creative professionals in an October 2023 survey by Ascend2 and Canto. Retailers must balance hyper-personalization with privacy. Implement robust data privacy policies. Retailers must keep customer data safe and comply with privacy laws and regulations.

The news: Stripe introduced Tap to Pay on Android for merchants using Stripe Terminal in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Singapore, the UK, and the US, per TechCrunch. The tech lets merchants accept in-person contactless payments with any Android mobile device that has NFC technology. Compatible payment methods include Google Pay and Visa, Mastercard, and American Express cards.

KEY STAT: One-third of UK adults haven鈥檛 used AI due to data privacy concerns, per a March 2023 KPMG survey. Only one other factor鈥攁 preference for human interaction鈥攚as more likely to stop UK adults from using the tech. GDPR fines are increasing鈥攂ut are they significant enough?