In March 2021, Instagram expanded its livestreaming offering with the launch of Live Rooms, which allow users to add up to three other co-hosts to their livestreams, doubling the number of hosts per livestream from two to four. Businesses and creators that use Live Rooms have access to Instagram’s shopping features.

And many auto manufacturers, including General Motors, Ford Motor Co., Honda Motor Co., and Hyundai Motor Co., already share driving data with telematics data exchanges such as Verisk and LexisNexis. These exchanges collect, analyze, and deliver the data to insurers. Data Can Be Immense Value-Add for Insurers.

Retail media advertising is the next big trend in digital advertising, driven by the surge in ecommerce spending and brands’ desire to target consumers close to the point of purchase.

Several brands have adopted reusable packaging to help solve for environmental strain. Dove, for example, offers a stainless steel refillable deodorant case; numerous others like The Clorox Co. and Nestlé have partnered with TerraCycle’s Loop for reusable containers.

Key elements in selecting a brand include pricing, product design, and customer experience in product and brand interactions, as well as distribution—how and where consumers encounter the products.

This is a great example of how a legacy brand that isn’t necessarily set up for D2C has been able to exploit this behavioral change because of its investment in influencers and digital and data.”. Other legacy brands have reaped D2C benefits, too. Levi Strauss & Co. saw in-store sales in Europe drop sharply during lockdowns, pushing regional revenues down 68%.

Many of the best-known subscription ecommerce brands are digitally native upstarts that successfully disrupted incumbent brands over the last decade. DNVB ecommerce sales are still growing steadily, but many of the individual brands are feeling the strain of supply chain issues, changes to iOS resulting in limited ad personalization and performance reporting, and the rising cost of digital ads.

The social platforms have had no trouble getting brands to buy in to their live shopping ambitions—Facebook’s Live Shopping Fridays, for example, boasts many big-name brands from Sephora to Abercrombie & Fitch. The networks’ enthusiasm for live shopping comes directly from China, where livestream shopping is already big business for brands.

Marketer Takeaway: Letting advertisers choose who can reply directly to their tweets helps them control the conversation around their brand. That’s a big brand safety plus, as consumers regularly use the comments section of brand posts to complain or write negative reviews.

While Jones Soda Co., a small beverage company that markets heavily to extreme sports, shifted to esports for the first time after the 2020 Summer Olympics were canceled. “We had a big marketing push that was going to be centered around skateboarding becoming an Olympic sport,” said Maisie Antoniello, vice president of marketing at Jones Soda.

The dominant digital path to purchase begins with a product search—often unbranded—during which the consumer demonstrates intent. They are subsequently delivered paid and organic results for relevant brands and retailers, steering them in the direction of a conversion event. But what about all those times when a consumer doesn’t know what they want? That’s the opportunity for discovery, and where social commerce platforms are beginning to fill the void.

“We want to continue to take an approach of matching the social media platform with the objectives of a brand, and not just say, ‘I want to do influencer marketing. Therefore, I'm going on Instagram,’” said Sean Naegeli, co-founder and chief influencer officer at influencer marketing firm Mavrck. How Lenovo Used Creators to Co-Create a ‘Sitcom’.

This type of data collaboration between publisher (media owner) and advertiser (brand) is still emerging, but it’s likely to become more common as brands realize the limitations of their own first-party data.

Having to work with lower creative and production quality will result in new creative ad formats that involve influencer media, user-generated content and partner co-branding, Anthony of Merkle said. There will be stronger emphasis on social listening. Keeping abreast of consumer sentiment, not only toward your brand but generally about how consumers are feeling, will remain critically important.

McKinsey & Co. Meniga. Microsoft. Morning Consult. National Geographic. NTT. NYU Stern Center for Sustainable Business. PitchBook. Roush Industries. Savanta. S&P Global. TechCrunch. Simon-Kucher & Partners.

According to November 2020 polling by Winterberry Group among brand marketers with at least $20 million in annual marketing spending, about six in 10 US respondents had used some type of secured, shared environment (like a clean room) to analyze multiple data sets, and a similar share had participated in data exchanges. About half had used data marketplaces or data co-ops.

Virtual reality (VR) has the potential to redefine how brands engage with consumers, and companies in China are investing heavily in this emerging technology. But adoption there has hit a wall, meaning the industry must overcome technical challenges, and other pain points, for VR to become a game changer for consumer marketing.

“Disney+ isn’t just competing with Netflix,” said Michael Baer, senior vice president of brand and marketing at Ipsos Media Development. “It’s competing with YouTube and video games; it’s competing with a cronut.”. The streaming service is also competing with traditional TV. Amid all the attention to digital video, kids still view lots of nondigital TV.

Video ads using creator content can also outperform brand-produced videos. They’re often more natively compelling, relevant, and authentic, while still featuring branding elements and, in some cases, links to a brand site.

Facebook co-opted the term metaverse to define its VR platform, which it envisions as a new computing platform that takes place in virtual space.

It’s backed by well-known brands like Amazon, which boosts its credibility and mindshare. Around 26% of its members are Amazon employees, and it recently launched 17 new clinics near Amazon’s distribution centers across different states. Crossover also touts other self-insured employer clients like Apple, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Microsoft.

Few brands have the resources to own and operate their own tech stack, but it’s feasible for many brands to hire the necessary talent to take the lead in managing first-party data and relationships with ad tech partners. Don’t Discount the Power of Good Creative.

Using sounds and video styles that users are likely to recognize allows brands to leverage virality more consistently. Be careful not to wait too long to jump on the bandwagon for any given trend. Don’t try to force your brand into niche content areas that don’t make sense. Authenticity and native content go hand in hand.