Amazon Business, which has grown rapidly since its launch in 2015, will increase its US product sales by 43.5% year over year to reach $27.59 billion in 2021.

When Amazon starts a new business, competitors scrap business plans and markets shudder. We examined 19 of Amazon’s divisions to help parse how the company fuels its flywheel to keep driving the virtuous cycle.

US B2B payments declined slightly faster than expected in 2020 at -7.1% as opposed to -4.9% for an actual sales value of $25.539 trillion in 2020. By year end 2021, those sales will grow by 7.8% for an overall sales value of $27.542 trillion.

In 2020, B2B digital ad spending leaped from 4.9% of the US digital ad market to 5.7%, marking a sizable growth in share for the industry.

Crypto exchange Bitpanda—which recently opened a B2B arm—raised $263M, as investors continue to target players that provide infrastructure to third parties.

When will mobile surpass nonmobile in B2B ad spend?

Display ads like banners and graphics, which have historically been less of a priority than search ads for B2B marketers, took up a greater share of US ad spending than ever before in 2020.

In 2020, US B2Bs overhauled their marketing and advertising as the coronavirus pandemic eliminated in-person channels. Digital ad spending, never a central part of B2B go-to market strategies, surged.

B2B, C2C, and B2C payments all stand to gain from shorter settlement times, which offer greater financial flexibility and control. Faster payments’ speed also provides valuable transparency for firms, which benefit from the certainty of immediate payment.

Top reasons B2B professionals seek external expertise

Just as consumers are adjusting to life during the pandemic, B2Bs are figuring out how to stay in business, operate and recover. Just as consumers are adjusting to life during the pandemic, B2Bs are figuring out how to stay in business, operate and recover.

Historically, B2B marketers have focused on converting new customers. But the B2B marketing landscape is maturing, and these marketers are learning from their B2C peers that it's less expensive to keep an existing customer rather than bring in a new one. To do this, marketing teams must align with the sales and accounts teams and take a more holistic approach to the customer journey—together. It's happening in a variety of ways, from engaging in content marketing campaigns and playing in marketplaces like Alibaba and Amazon Business, to leveraging data more effectively and championing the cross-functional CMO.

An increasingly important part of companies’ messaging efforts is content marketing, which they rely on to build brand awareness and engagement, provide thought leadership, and tap into cultural conversations around particular trends and topics.

We estimate that slightly more than half of marketers (50.3%) will use LinkedIn for marketing and advertising purposes by 2021. This year, 49.6% of companies with 100+ employees will use the professional social media platform.

Traditionally, organizations haven’t viewed the customer experience as a singular thing owned by one particular person or department. That’s changed, as brands have worked to put customers at the forefront—and it’s given modern CMOs new importance as owners of that experience.

The transformation of technology and systems has given rise to a whole new host of responsibilities for B2B Tech CMOs, but most will tell you that the future of the role is focused on providing a holistic customer experience to ensure growth and loyalty.

Utilizing marketplaces is one way for a seller to expand reach. But for some manufacturers and distributors, that increased reach is not worth the competitive threats that they may face on a marketplace.

When a B2B company is starting to build or assess its current marketplace strategy, understanding the different marketplace options is a first step. For our “B2B Marketplaces 2019” report, we analyzed the top three B2B marketplaces in the US—Amazon Business, Alibaba and Thomas—along with an overview of what makes their platforms work for both buyers and sellers.

US advertisers are spending about a third of their nonsocial programmatic display ad dollars on fees this year—aka the “ad tech tax.” Read on to learn more about our inaugural estimates of spending on programmatic fees.

Twenty-year-old Chinese ecommerce giant The Alibaba Group is making moves to grow its US B2B business, allowing US-based small and medium-sized sellers to list goods on its B2B marketplace, Alibaba.com.