Livestreaming is a small but growing part of creator culture. Much like Stories, livestreaming is a way for creators and other influential figures on social media to present content that is often less polished than photos or recorded video. Livestreams also give influencers a way to interact with their audience in real time through live chat.

Amid pandemic-accelerated shifts, online communities have become an integral part of the consumer journey. According to Verto Analytics, Reddit users are informed, make fast, high-value purchases, and ultimately become strong brand advocates.

Even before the pandemic, the direct-to-consumer (D2C) space was heating up in Western Europe. But the side effects of stay-at-home orders helped accelerate D2C’s popularity, and the landscape looks to be permanently altered.

On today's episode, we discuss how the coronavirus changed each generation, Twitter's ecommerce ambitions, what consumers want from brands one year into the pandemic, Virginia becoming the second state to enact a consumer privacy law, TikTok competitors from YouTube and Netflix, how to improve your art viewing experience, and more. Tune in to listen to the discussion with eMarketer principal analyst Jeremy Goldman, analyst Blake Droesch, and director of forecasting at Insider Intelligence Oscar Orozco.

Now, increasing restrictions on data collection, changes to Apple’s Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA), and the death of the third-party cookie will mean that winning brands must reduce their dependence on third parties, and place a greater focus on first-party data and owned channels. In short, they’ll need more direct-to-consumer (D2C) marketing, and less (though still plenty) advertising.

Sonika Patel, vice president of marketing at Danone, shares how the brand built a value-based community rooted in health and wellness during the pandemic lockdowns, and offers advice for female marketers. Watch Industry Voices, a conversation between Sonika and Marissa Coslov, vice president of business development at Insider Intelligence, in celebration of Women’s History Month.

Over the past year, retailers have had to adjust their marketing strategies and take on a more omnichannel approach to keep up with changing shopping behaviors.

Online grocery took off dramatically in 2020 as a result of the pandemic; that’s no surprise to anyone. According to our estimates, food and beverage was by far the fastest-growing ecommerce category in the US in 2020. Given its low penetration and high sales growth, digital grocery is the next big opportunity in ecommerce.

A direct-to-consumer (D2C) strategy wasn’t top-of-mind when soda brand Olipop launched in 2017. In fact, during its first year of business, the brand didn’t even have a website—primarily relying on retail brick-and-mortar partnerships to drive sales. But last year, everything changed.

On today's episode, we discuss data’s role in customer experience (CX), how the pandemic changed the way companies approach customers, and how to measure CX ROI. We then talk about the best loyalty programs in the US, shifting to contactless payments, and whether Gen Z will recover from the pandemic-induced recession. Tune in to the discussion with eMarketer principal analyst at Insider Intelligence Jeremy Goldman.

Learn about the three surprise successes Suzanne Kounkel, CMO of Deloitte, saw during a tough year and hear her inspiring advice for female executives. Watch Industry Voices, a conversation between Suzanne and Marissa Coslov, vice president of business development at Insider Intelligence, in celebration of Women’s History Month.

Especially for younger consumers, a significant attraction of digital products and platforms has been their novelty, as opposed to their utility. But the novel coronavirus has given most of us as much novelty as we care to deal with. As the pandemic drags past Q1 and into Q2, the desire for a return to normalcy will only grow stronger, to one degree or another. This is why nostalgia marketing will likely continue to enjoy a renaissance in 2021.

Offering a loyalty program is an effective way for retailers to acquire new customers, but it also fosters relationships for years to come. Setting up the framework, however, can be challenging—especially if retailers decide to handle everything in-house.

The growth of the online category accelerated beyond our previous expectations in 2020. Amid the pandemic, tens of millions of US consumers became online grocery buyers for the first time, according to our latest forecast on US grocery sales. In 2021, this behavior will go from trial to habit for many shoppers.

Despite how consumers feel about it, politics remains a core part of the social media experience. This report explores how marketers should navigate social in the aftermath of the 2020 US presidential election.

Livestreaming has become a prominent feature across the social media and digital video landscapes. Here’s how marketers are taking advantage of opportunities within the space.

Social commerce is at the nexus of media-commerce convergence, a much larger and more powerful trend. One outgrowth of the past decade’s shift from mass to addressable media is that brands can efficiently find and aggregate niche audiences while shortening their path to purchase. It makes sense that there would be efforts to explicitly commercialize media content by making it shoppable.

The 2020 US holiday season posted better-than-expected retail sales growth, as huge ecommerce gains added to a surprisingly positive performance for brick-and-mortar retail. The early outlook for the 2021 holiday season is solid despite major economic uncertainty ahead.

The convergence of media and commerce is inching closer. Nearly a year after adding a direct checkout feature to its platform, NBCUniversal is investing further in the commerce space.

Retail ecommerce was thrust forward in 2020, mostly due to periodic stay-at-home measures enacted across the country. During mandated quarantines in the first wave of the pandemic and a second wave in the fall that coincided with the holiday shopping season, consumers shopped online to a degree they never had before. Retailers in Canada quickly adapted to these new conditions, setting them up for continued high volumes of online ordering in 2021.