The majority of businesses selling products on Amazon still don’t use optimization tools to bolster their advertising efforts. But as Amazon’s ad business continues to grow, so will the competition for valuable ad placements—and many sellers are now looking for ways to improve their strategic advertising efforts.

Subscription-based video is growing across a broad spectrum of services, from on-demand platforms like Netflix to aggregators that deliver live TV over the internet.

While the vast majority of TV advertising is still bought and sold through traditional methods, change is happening, and ad tech players don’t want to miss out.

After initial signs of success, Kohl’s will expand its Amazon returns program nationwide in July. The pilot program, which launched in Chicago and Los Angeles in 2017, performed particularly well, leading to 9% growth in new customers and 8% growth in revenues compared with national growth of 1% and 2%, respectively, according to payment data analyzed by Earnest Research.

In April, Wayfair celebrated its second annual Way Day, a “holiday” dedicated to better-than-Black-Friday deals. The retailer saw double-digit sales growth over the first Way Day, as well as an increased number of orders and unique customers, according to an April 2019 report from Edison Trends. Better timing, an extended sales period and greater consumer offerings helped the retailer achieve these metrics.

This Mother’s Day, gift givers will spend a record-breaking $25.0 billion on their mothers and other women in their lives, according to an April 2019 report from the National Retail Federation (NRF). This figure tops last year’s spending of $23.1 billion.

eMarketer principal analyst Andrew Lipsman discusses Amazon's new one-day delivery promise to US Prime members. How much will this move the needle? How are the company's financials? And what's the most significant move Amazon has made in the past six months?

One sector seeing major growth is Walmart’s CPG categories. Although trailing Amazon in volume across nearly every category, Walmart’s year-over-year growth is substantial. According to an April 2019 release from marketing analytics platform Jumpshot, Walmart’s 2018 growth outpaced Amazon in five major CPG categories.

Last week, Amazon announced its latest ploy to attract and retain Prime members: An $800 million investment in one-day delivery. This expansion initiative comes when growth among its most lucrative shoppers is waning. We estimate that US Prime user growth will be less than 9% this year, vs. 12.5% in 2018.

Programmatic ad spending will reach $59.45 billion in 2019, accounting for 84.9% of the US digital display ad market. This report looks at the trends driving investment to $81.00 billion by 2021, breaking it down by transaction type, format and device.

Monthly purchases made via smart speakers rose by 5.4% year over year in the US, per January 2019 data from voice tech companies Voicebot and Voicify. However, those who shopped using voice accounted for less than one-fifth of smart speaker users.

Digital platforms will claim nearly €5 billion ($5.9 billion) in ad outlays in France this year—equivalent to 41.0% of total media ad spending. Three-quarters of that digital sum will go to Facebook and Google.

In today’s “eMarketer Daily Forecast” video, senior director of forecasting Monica Peart tees up the numbers for Amazon’s ad business. Tune in.

Newspapers and magazines have seen declining print revenues for years and hoped digital would make up for those losses. But even as the US digital ad market will grow by 19.1% this year to $129.34 billion, newspapers and magazines aren’t seeing increases nearly that big.

According to a January 2019 survey from product experience management platform Salsify, US digital shoppers expect an average of about six images, and three videos when looking at a product on Amazon or another retailer.

This year, US advertisers will spend two-thirds of their digital budgets on mobile placements. Mobile ad spending has taken the majority of digital spending every year since 2015, and both search and display spending skew heavily mobile. But, even though it falls under the display umbrella, video is the only digital ad format where more ad dollars are still spent outside mobile channels.

Grocery is the least penetrated but fastest-growing category in ecommerce today. Traditional brands and retailers need to understand why this channel shift is accelerating and adjust their marketing and selling strategies accordingly.

Last year, the number of locations offering “buy online, pick up in-store” (BOPUS) nearly doubled among leading US grocery retailers. Walmart (and various third-party partners), Target/Shipt, Kroger/Instacart, Ahold and Albertsons brought their collective number of click-and-collect locations from 2,451 in January 2018 to 5,800 in December 2018, per data from CommonSense Robotics.

In 2018, total worldwide app revenues grew 63% year over year, according to app commerce company Poq. Additionally, time spent in shopping apps grew 45% from two years prior, per data from App Annie.

Digital will account for 50.1% of total media ad spending in 2019, reaching the halfway mark for the first time.