Ä¢¹½AV

Beauty is proving resilient to the cost-of-living crisis as shoppers splurge on premium products to boost their mood and skin health. But it won’t escape unscathed, with consumers already streamlining their beauty regimes and searching for bargains online.

Summer is on the way, and the advertising landscape has already changed significantly since the start of the year. We checked in on data surrounding the biggest trends, including AI search (which is happening whether consumers want it or not), a TikTok ban (no one knows but be prepared), retail media (it’s exploding), and more.

While retail sales growth is expected to slow this year, ecommerce sales will grow by double digits to reach $1.148 trillion, buoyed by online grocery, health and personal care, and online resale. Here are five charts on the categories, retailers, and channels driving ecommerce growth

Nearly six in 10 (57% of) Roku viewers have paused an ad to shop a product online, per Roku’s internal data. Other retailers are already seeing success with Roku’s shoppable ads: Walmart said clickthrough rates for campaigns using the ad format were at least three times higher than for average video campaigns run through its DSP.

Although inflation, a strong job market, and a positive economic outlook are at play, three dominant ad channels are contributing to upward US ad spend. October saw a 3.2% YoY growth for the US ad market, marking the fourth consecutive month of spending increases, according to the Standard Media Index ad market tracker.

Our take: The saturation of onsite retail media ads is diminishing the shopping experience, according to critics—which is pushing retailers to explore offsite avenues. The growth in offsite programmatic retail media not only heralds a new era in digital marketing but also necessitates a nuanced approach to ensure transparency and maintain consumer trust.

And again, Amazon, I think, is disrupting the search process for people, or for shopping for actual things. Some competitors might emerge; Shopify, potentially, if they start aggregating all their stores into one platform. They've actually launched a website. That could be another way that Google's presence in the shopping process gets disrupted, I think.

On today's podcast episode, we discuss which app experiences best transfer over to the new Apple Vision Pro mixed reality headset, whether instant AI-generated videos will be a hit, department stores' path to relevancy, if folks are ready for shoppable media, how marriage is changing in the US, and more. Tune in to the discussion with our analysts Ross Benes, Bill Fisher, and Carina Perkins.

Zach recently wrote about two new features that aim to make it easier for creators to market products through videos on its platforms as per TechCrunch. One, YouTube's rolling out a feature that lets creators make a shopping button appear at relevant points in their videos. Think about demonstrating a beauty product.

There's a YouTube video of him, which if we can, we'll put a link in the show notes because it's amazing. YouTube video, you have to watch the whole 40-minute video. Just fast-forward towards the end. The YouTube video showing him beating the game. He freezes in shock and then says, "I can't even tell my mom because she's at work." It's pretty damn heartwarming, yeah.

On today's podcast episode, we discuss what Fortnite developer Epic Games' win over Google means, whether McDonald's new restaurant brand will be a success, why women's sports worldwide are exploding right now, if video streaming bundles are inevitable, how AI rules can keep pace with AI development, who's planning to live underwater in a few years, and more. Tune in to the discussion with our analysts Ross Benes, Bill Fisher, and Carina Perkins.

Mobile is driving ecommerce sales growth, with 43.2% of the $1.137 trillion in US ecommerce sales we project for this year. As mcommerce sales rise, retailers are innovating to get a piece of the $491.14 billion pie. Mobile commerce will be especially vital this holiday season. Some 79% of US online shoppers shopped via mobile during the Cyber Five last year, according to Bizrate Insights data cited in a Forrester report.

While the event delivered a modest sales lift, it proved to be a successful Prime acquisition tool: Nearly one in four non-Prime shoppers (23%) ended up subscribing to the service to access better discounts, according to PYMNTS data. Amazon continues to be laser-focused on improving delivery speeds and offering shoppers additional convenience.

On today's podcast episode, we discuss what the hell happened—and is happening—to online ads, whether the video streaming boom is officially over, the next big wearable category, what happens when the First Amendment collides with social media, what the world would look like if there were only 100 people, and more. Tune in to the discussion with our forecasting writer Ethan Cramer-Flood and analysts Ross Benes and Blake Droesch.

All eyes have been on streaming at this year’s upfronts. Sports are moving to digital, new (and old) trends are emerging for ad buying and delivery, and political advertising has been surprisingly quiet. Here are four themes that stood out this upfronts season.

Thursday Night Football shows viewership metrics don’t say it all: Amazon’s Black Friday audience was far lower than expected, but DTC opportunities drove brand excitement.

When it comes to video services, both paid and free, there’s greater parity between francophones and anglophones in Canada. Subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) is most common—but multiple subscriptions aren’t favored. SVOD rates are similar across Canada. But 40% of respondents in the whole country paid for three or more video services, compared with 28% in Quebec.

Some 250.5 million US consumers will use an OTT video service (i.e., any app or website that provides streaming video content over the internet) this year, representing 73.3% of the population, per our September 2023 forecast. YouTube is the top OTT provider, with 241.8 million viewers this year.

There's a lack of inventory and there just isn't any sort of reason that you would shop there. There's nothing aside from whizz-bang technology that I don't know that the average consumer cares about that make you want to shop there. So, that's said. I think they will continue experimenting. I think a year from now, they'll probably just pull the plug on it.

CTV to continue strong US growth: Households using the format to more than double pay TV in 2024, aided by tech shifts.

But Target, they're trying to boost online shopping growth. We estimate Target's e-commerce sales will grow only 3% this year versus Walmart's 13%. Last year, Target's online shopping was an even lower, 1.4%. Currently, of Target's online orders, about 40% are click and collect, but that share is flat, has been for a couple of years.

Nielsen reverses stance on Amazon first-party football data: After networks and industry groups cried foul, Nielsen won’t include Amazon data in its panel currency.

All eyes are on streaming. Last year, non-pay TV viewers surpassed traditional pay TV viewers in the US, per our forecast. Years of streaming platform proliferation are over, yielding to consolidation and fragmented ad measurement. Bundles between streaming platforms and partnerships with retail media platforms are forming, leaving media buyers with a headache over how to strategize.

They're going to have to rely a lot on reality content or live video potentially, which is something we're going to mention later. But yeah, that's going to be really tough for them. Marcus Johnson:. It does feel like they've missed their window.

The other was that there were trackers on children's videos that basically made it so that if a child watching a video clicked on an ad or something, they would be given these common trackers that would then track them across the internet, something that Google says that it does not support and doesn't want to do. So they got in some trouble for that.