🗝️ Future of Ecommerce

Formerly Digital Marketing Must-Knows

Author

Kole Ogundipe
May 09, 2023

Hey, Marketers.

Welcome to the first edition of The Keyword!

In today’s email

  • 🛍️ The New Era of Shopping?

  • đź’ˇ Last Week’s Must-Knows

  • 👋🏽 Who’s sending you this email

The Big Idea

The New Era of Shopping?

Facebook, Instagram & TikTok are all offering in-app checkout. While Amazon, already the eCommerce leader, has added a TikTok-style feed.

Facebook & Instagram Shops were launched in 2020 as a way for users to discover products on a business page. Businesses will soon be forced to use Meta's in-app checkout and won’t be able to direct users to complete the purchase externally. Meta’s checkout will become mandatory for Shops by April 24 next year.

TikTok is offering the same. Last week they announced the beta launch of TikTok Shops. Like with Meta, the transaction takes place within TikTok and not at the brand’s store.

While Amazon fully rolled out Inspire in the U.S., a TikTok-like shopping feed. The feed is a feature available within the main Amazon app. It’s made up of short-form video and photo posts from creators, brands, and other customers showcasing products. And include shoppable links to the Amazon checkout.

Why we care? All 4 companies want to create an in-app ecosystem that pairs both product discovery and purchasing. That offers shoppers a more seamless shopping experience, which in theory increases conversion rates for brands. Plus, if the transaction happens in-app, that provides rich data signals to help ad targeting algorithms heavily impacted by Apple’s iOS 14.5 changes.

Yes, there will be a commission charged on sales*. But the bigger trade-off for brands is control. Control over data, the customer relationship, and the buying experience. Most medium and large businesses won’t want to join the program. These platforms have their work cut out to win brands over.

But ultimately, consumers will have a vote on how they want to shop. Up to this point there have been many attempts, but no platform has cracked it in the West.

*Commission rates: TikTok TBD, Meta 5%, Amazon (typical range:) 8-15%

đź“Š Who has the advantage in "Social Commerce"

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ICYMI: Last Week’s Must-Knows

1. Meta made unannounced changes to ad location targeting. Now only the only option for location targeting is “Living in or recently in this location”. Previously advertisers could specify if the people were living in / recently in / traveling in the location. (Jon Loomer â†—️)

2. TikTok launched a new ad product, Pulse Premier. Advertisers can place ads alongside content produced by premium publishers, including Buzzfeed, DotDash Meredith, NBCUniversal, UFC, and WWE. 50% of the ad revenue is shared with those publishers. This is likely a win-win for publishers and TikTok. SimilarWeb found that social media traffic to news publishers is down 55% from 2020. (Reuters â†—️)

3. Meta makes enhancements to Reels ads. Augmented reality (AR) capabilities are coming to Reels Ads and Facebook Stories. Allowing brands to offer immersive experiences and AR filters. Reels ads will also get a larger call-to-action button, feature more advertiser information and work with third-party measurement partners. (Tech Crunch â†—️)

4. YouTube enables brands to show ads next to trending Shorts. By adding Shorts to YouTube Select, place ads around the most popular content. YouTube reported 1.5 billion logged-in monthly Shorts users. (Google â†—️)

5. Snapchat is testing sponsored links in its MyAI chatbot. Snapchat’s TikTok clone, Spotlight has 170 million monthly active users, which they have opened up to advertisers globally. While brands can now also reserve the first video ad seen in Snapchat’s Friend Stories - which has a potential reach of 50m daily users in the U.S. (Tech Crunch â†—️)

More Headlines:

  • Reddit posts are easier to share

  • Shopify sold its logistics division

  • Google is bringing blue check marks to Gmail

  • YouTube now sells its premium Masthead by the hour

  • Microsoft announced their new partnership spanning Roku streaming ads, Microsoft Audience Ads, and Bing’s paid and organic search.

Upcoming Tomorrow: The future of TikTok, according to the CEO

BTW if you haven’t met - Hey, 👋🏽

I’m Kole—lemme tell you a bit about myself + my newsletter.

I stumbled into Marketing about 9 years ago and joined an incredibly fast-growing Digital Marketing agency. Moving from my hometown in Shropshire, to London then New York. Working with a ton of great brands along the way like AMC Networks, DKNY & The Athletic.

A couple of years ago I left the agency world for a big life and work change. I’ve been working & traveling around Latin America since. Starting and joining new projects I think are interesting while learning the language.

And this newsletter is my latest project.

The goal:

Well you know how every single week a ton changes in the Digital Marketing world?

Because we have Google, Facebook, Amazon, TikTok and etc…

…constantly launching stuff to compete for the hundreds of billions of dollars our cumulative marketing budgets 🤯🤯

I’m here to cut through all that noise.

And tell you exactly what you need to know and why it matters. In 5 mins tops.

Each weekday I’ll slide a cheat sheet into your inbox.

You can just grab a coffee, scroll and enjoy!

Thank you for being an early subscriber

- Kole

P.S. This is me (right below). Right now I’m in 🇲🇽 MĂ©xico with my brother. Absolutely in our element here outside the coworking space. It’s the small things 🙂 

Have a friend in Marketing who would find this content useful? I’d be super grateful if you forwarded it to them to try!

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