As ecommerce scales, online returns are becoming a permanent margin drag. Fees and tighter policies can shift consumer behavior but put sales and loyalty at risk, forcing retailers to balance cost control with convenience expectations.

Social media is emerging as a key growth channel for retail media networks (RMNs) as they expand beyond their owned properties.

Reddit has surged in recent years, fueled in part by Google search referrals. But the platform’s unique attributes mean marketers must take a more bespoke, labor-intensive approach.

Watch AR ecommerce at Snapchat's quarterly earnings: The company is sure to give more details on its push to make AR shopping a bigger part of its platform, especially after announcing two major partnerships earlier this week.

Amazon’s AR push: The ecommerce giant has opened an in-person hair salon to show off its new augmented reality (AR) tools. Were Amazon to integrate AR into its site, it could make this experimental mode of shopping commonplace.

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.

Despite the hype, most US consumers won’t make a purchase via social media in 2021. Discovery and consideration, rather than direct transactions within social apps, will remain key opportunities for brands next year.

US consumers are shopping online more as they continue to avoid brick-and-mortar. According to a recent eMarketer study conducted by Bizrate Insights, health, food and beverage purchases made digitally are seeing an uptick. Apparel, not so much.

At a life stage that entails lots of buying, millennials are combining digital and in-store shopping in ways that work best for them.

Since Instagram rolled out its Checkout feature earlier this year, brands have begun linking influencer content to shopping tools as a way to drive—and measure—direct sales. Should the platform hide likes from public view, which it began testing in the US this week, influencer marketers could be forced to look beyond vanity metrics to more advanced measurement tools, including social commerce and in-store purchase behavior.

This is the first installment in an ongoing series of monthly updates on the major social media platforms. The goal of each update is to provide a summary of key developments and what they mean for marketers.

Social media has become a hub of influence on many consumers’ shopping. Boomers, though, have been wary of this, whether via ads, postings by fellow consumers or the cajolery of “influencers.”

Boomers are not indifferent to the benefits of digital shopping. However, their reluctance to use smartphones for any and everything tends to limit the digital proportion of their overall shopping—as does their worry about digital privacy.

As we’ve covered, ad blocking in the US and many parts of western Europe are here to stay. Whether it’s over privacy concerns or the general annoyance over ads ruining user experience, many internet users are not happy with ad loads when they browse the web.

This report features our latest forecasts for US voice assistant users, including those who use voice assistants on smartphones and smart speakers. It also provides an analysis of the trends shaping the market.

Amazon Prime Day has emerged as a massive midsummer shopping event that drives incremental shopping at Amazon and competing retailers while serving as the unofficial lead-in to the back-to-school shopping season.

Because shopping on smart speakers is gaining popularity faster than expected, we’ve raised our latest forecast for smart speaker use.

This summer, Nike will roll out its latest augmented reality (AR) initiative, Nike Fit. While the feature is another move toward independence and away from wholesalers, it could also help to alleviate the biggest hassles of online shopping when it comes to clothes and accessories.

Three in five US internet users say they've purchased clothes, shoes or accessories online in the past month, according to an April 2019 eMarketer survey conducted by Bizrate Insights. That figure climbs to 68% for females as well as younger consumers (ages 18 to 34).

More than four in five internet users worldwide said a quick and easy checkout was the most valued aspect of the shopping experience, making it the highest ranked response to a January 2019 survey from iVend Retail.