Here’s how publishers are developing and expanding their ecommerce monetization strategies, and how brands and retailers can partner with them to drive purchases in the affiliate channel.

Similarly, adidas and Puma both posted surges in D2C sales across Europe in 2020. For most traditional brands, a shift to direct sales is just one aspect of more ambitious omnichannel plans. For example, Armani is developing an advanced D2C offering as part of its Next Era project.

Premium athleisure brand Sylphlike Loli, for example, keeps its prices below the RMB 300 ($43) threshold, in contrast to Nike and adidas. Cosmetics brand Perfect Diary, which caters more to the skin tones and concerns of consumers in China, has been stealing market share from L’Oréal’s Maybelline in recent years. These digitally native brands understand that consumers in China are not a monolith.

“The agency I work for works with adidas,” Grow’s Staughton said. “The brand artists and athletes and cultural icons that it works with, and it could potentially bring those people into a room. It’s also designing really cutting-edge shoes and has a sustainability story. I think that's the real potential for brands. It's not necessarily just slapping an ad on it.

Levi Strauss and adidas both reported D2C sales reaching approximately 40% of their revenues during the most recent quarter. As brands pull more sales through their digital storefronts, they benefit from additional first-party data, stronger customer relationships, and margin expansion.

Prominent brands like adidas have also produced short films to mark the holiday. Family togetherness and traditional values, with a twist of modern societal dilemmas, have been popular themes, with subtle branding messages only to be revealed at the very end of the film.

DAZN’s soccer focus put it in a good position to sell adidas Canada on an advertising sponsorship to coincide with the launch of the 2019 EPL season. The deal enabled adidas to advertise across all DAZN’s EPL live content, in addition to its Sporting News website. adidas is the first brand to run ads on the DAZN platform in Canada.

He has also had sponsorships with brands like Red Bull, Samsung, Uber Eats and adidas. Ninja’s appeal is based on his personality, not his skills as a gamer. In fact, last year, he didn’t even qualify for the Fortnite World Cup, the game’s premier tournament.

By the week of March 26, nearly all of H&M's stores were back in business, with sales down 23%. adidas, whose Q1 2020 net sales worldwide declined 19% year over year, noted a rebound at its retail stores in China during March. The sports apparel giant also cited that its ecommerce business in China outperformed its global growth of 55% during the same month.

Brands that have paused spending, such as Starbucks, Verizon, Ben & Jerry’s, Ford and adidas, have done so to varying degrees. Some have pulled their ads for the month of July on Facebook (and Instagram) only, while others have taken it several steps further. Unilever, for instance, has pledged to stop US spending on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter through the end of 2020.

Nike generally targets a younger audience and is likely to benefit from its adoption of AR, which is also used by competitors like adidas—a company beloved by millennials. According to an April 2019 survey from eMarketer conducted by Bizrate Insights, 42% of US digital shoppers are at least somewhat interested in using AR/VR while shopping. And that figure climbs to 52% among 18- to 34-year-olds.

In its most ambitious push into ecommerce so far, the company launched “Checkout on Instagram” in March 2019, with retail partners that included adidas, H&M, Nike, Prada and Warby Parker. The new capability, which helps brands streamline checkout directly within the app for products seen on Instagram, is part of a larger move into commerce-adjacent services like messaging and payments.

Marketers like groups, too: In a session at f8, Emily Maxey, vice president of global marketing at Adidas, described how the company used Facebook Groups, such as Adidas Runners, to facilitate real-life connections between members, find influencers and product advocates and learn more about what products and features athletes might want in the future.

Shoemaker adidas owns two Instagram accounts with massive followings—@adidas with more than 23 million followers and @adidasOriginals with more than 33 million. During the company’s Q1 2019 earnings call, CEO Kasper Rorsted touted the partnership with Instagram and credited the beta test on Checkout with helping to propel adidas to 40% year-over-year online sales growth.

The day before, adidas executive Eric Liedtke—instrumental to the company’s innovative brand and partnership initiatives, and once thought to be an eventual successor to the CEO role—had announced his impending departure after 25 years at the company. While the timing of these leadership transitions was perhaps merely a coincidence, together they tell a bigger story of retail at a crossroads.