Online travel bookings can make credit cards especially vulnerable. Meanwhile consumer-facing identity fraud losses continue to mount. Issuers could shift more resources to developing user-friendly digital antifraud tools that leverage customer demand. Providing these tools can increase digital trust, generating higher customer satisfaction and loyalty. U.S.

Standout categories included jewelry (+82.6% YoY), apparel (+80% YoY), and restaurants (+61.4% YoY)—indicators that consumers spent more time and money outside their homes as COVID-19 restrictions eased and the vaccination campaign progressed. Opportunities abound: Here are some moves that could benefit Mastercard and help it take advantage of the recent spending surge.

That makes ecommerce support invaluable to SMBs as more transition online: One-third of small businesses identified “new online channels” as a top area for growth in 2022, per Visa’s December 2021 data, and those selling online reported that just over half of their revenues came from the channel, on average.

Marketers must look past some familiar stereotypes of millennial life—about their digital usage, shopping behavior, finances and attitudes toward homeownership—to grasp the realities of how this cohort has evolved.

“This year, apparel was up 1%—essentially flat. So, this was not an apparel season,” said Steve Sadove, former chairman and CEO of Saks and senior advisor to Mastercard. “This was more of an electronics season, which was up 4.6%. ... Jewelry held up pretty well during the holiday season; department stores didn’t,” he said.

Retail: Includes mail order/catalog, restaurants/fast food, drug stores, retail stores, cosmetics stores, and merchants of apparel, home furnishings/textiles, toys, pet food/supplies, appliances, jewelry, and general merchandise. Travel: Includes airlines, car rental, hotels and resorts, cruises, and destination marketing organizations; includes both leisure and business travel.

This can hit highly discretionary categories, like apparel, the hardest. But Target is optimistic because of its uniquely strong position this holiday (perhaps only rivaled by Walmart, which has many of the same things going right), as its business continues to fire on all cylinders. Investments in store upgrades over the past few years are paying off.

KEY STAT: Retail will be the biggest digital ad spender in the UK this year, accounting for one in five digital ad pounds. Travel will spend the least, accounting for just 6.8% of total digital ad spending. Behind the Numbers.

US sales of video game hardware, software, accessories and game cards soared in March 2020 to levels not seen since 2008, according to The NPD Group. According to Business Insider Intelligence’s March 2020 research, 44.5% of US adults were spending more time playing video games during the pandemic.

More than eight in 10 consumers search for information online, and most of them conduct this activity on mobile devices as well as PCs. Many also now use even newer channels like visual and voice.

Digital activity is helping generate more interest in toys

In China, direct-to-consumer (D2C) brands lean heavily on digital but are less likely to launch standalone apps. Instead, they rely on the digital ecosystems of the country’s internet giants, reaching consumers where they already are. Among the top platforms in this space, WeChat offers brands a more intimate connection with shoppers.

Digital ad fraud is still a major problem in the programmatic ecosystem, with advertiser losses estimated in the billions of dollars annually. This report explores how advertisers, publishers and partners are protecting themselves.

The same survey also found that about two-thirds of US respondents (64.3%) had collaborated with other companies in some fashion to share first-party data. For Merkle’s respondents, second-party data partnerships were almost as important as collecting more first-party data.

The apparel retailer will discontinue its partnership of more than 20 years with Synchrony when their contract ends in April 2022, costing Synchrony one of its five biggest retail card partners, per The Wall Street Journal. Gap’s portfolio accounts for approximately 5% of Synchrony’s loans receivable and includes about 11 million open accounts between its private label and cobranded cards.

Minimal need for workwear, event wear, and back-to-school fashions has already hit the category hard. Additionally, excess inventory will be competing with the winter seasonal fashions that typically drive revenues and profits. According to Goldberg of Publicis, “There’s all of this distressed apparel that didn’t sell in season.

Additionally, demand for apparel was low last year when compared with other product categories. But the lower click-and-collect share figures for department stores probably comes down to consumers still preferring home delivery for lower-priority, less time-sensitive items like clothing and accessories.

Issuers might also focus on launching more tools to enhance the customer experience, like American Express recently did by expanding its digital receipts tool for Amazon purchases.

Data from Bain & Company predicted a recovery pattern similar to the 2002-2003 SARS pandemic, when consumption of food and cosmetics quickly recovered after the outbreak, while apparel-buying surged above the pre-pandemic level.