eMarketer principal analysts Nicole Perrin and Andrew Lipsman discuss what makes for a good loyalty scheme. They also break down Pinterest’s Q2 results, the impact of a negative review and lessons learned from Amazon Prime Day 2019.

Thanks to rising competition and a strong economy, travel companies are increasing their digital ad budgets.

eMarketer principal analyst Andrew Lipsman explains why politics inside Walmart are threatening the company’s ecommerce ambitions. He also discusses why Pinterest is encouraging video, people buy things they don’t want, Whole Foods is getting a boost from Amazon and millennials like to pay for things in bits.

After initially struggling to gain traction, social commerce has finally begun to materialize as platforms, including Instagram and Pinterest, fill the need for discovery in the digital shopping environment.

Social commerce is on the rise as visual platforms like Pinterest and Instagram fill a need for product discovery. By developing an effective social commerce strategy, brands and retailers can drive awareness, affinity, consideration and conversion.

The majority of social commerce in the US takes place on Pinterest, Instagram and Facebook, though Snapchat is also part of the mix.

As media time reaches a saturation point, consumers in Canada are showing a decided taste for the immediacy of digital.

As a last-touch channel, social networks have doubled in visit share to US retail sites in the past two years. And the overwhelming majority of social referrals come from smartphones, according to Q1 2019 data from Adobe Digital Insights.

In the latest episode of "Behind the Numbers," eMarketer principal analyst Andrew Lipsman assesses Pinterest's recent IPO. How did it fair? What does it mean for the company going forward—and what might trip it up along the way?

Despite the company’s efforts to increase their male audience, we predict 70% of Pinterest users will still be female by the end of the year. In today’s “eMarketer Daily Forecast,” junior forecasting analyst Nazmul Islam explains why. Tune in.

Social commerce only drives a fraction of ecommerce sales, but it's picking up speed. Between 2016 and 2018, social networks as a last-touch channel have doubled in visit share to US retail sites, according to Q3 2018 data from Adobe.

Pinterest made waves in late February as the not-so-well-kept secret leaked that it’s finally taking steps toward its initial public offering, which is anticipated sometime mid-year. While Pinterest is later to the public markets than other major digital ad platforms, the company has opted for a more deliberate approach to building its business than the typical Silicon Valley modus operandi of “move fast and break things.”

Influencer marketing is growing around the world, and a significant amount of activity is migrating to Instagram Stories. However, fraud is also growing, and that threatens the authenticity of influencer marketing.

Every week on eMarketer’s “Behind the Numbers” podcast, we take a few minutes to discuss some of the most intriguing headlines of the past seven days. This week, we're chatting about misinformation and how digital platforms are seeking to slow it, Pinterest's plan to go public, and landmark shift in ad spending.

In the past few years, some key ecommerce players—including Amazon, China’s Alibaba, and eBay—have rolled out visual search tools that allow users to submit images as queries instead of text.

While the number of US marketers that use Pinterest continues to steadily rise, the platform is trying to increase advertisers’ interest by expanding its search products and diversifying its audience by adding more male users.

Social commerce has reinvented itself many times over but has yet to prove itself as a solid sales tactic. Next year, the version that has been evolving during 2018 could finally take hold.

Popular social networking app Weibo (Sina Weibo) will continue its double-digit growth this year in China, according to eMarketer’s first forecast on Weibo usage. This year, Weibo usage will grow more than 17% to 340.1 million people in China. By the end of 2018, 24.6% of China’s population will be a Weibo user.

This year, 77.4 million people in the US—or nearly a quarter of the population—will use Pinterest, a 7.0% increase from 2017, according to eMarketer estimates.