Brands are increasingly moving dollars from platforms made for search to platforms built for shopping. This is happening across the globe. For instance, Alibaba, China’s largest online retailer is expected to claim more than a third of all of the market’s digital ad revenues in 2020. In the United States, marketers are considering a similar shift in their media mix. Read on to learn the top three reasons why advertisers are considering advertising on eCommerce platforms.
Achieving Relevance
Imagine you’re in a physical store. Let’s say you’re looking for a new phone. Now imagine that each salesperson comes by with suggestions for a designer handbag or new running shoes. How frustrated would you be? You were there for a new phone and while you like the idea of new running shoes, you’re not in the market for them. These salespeople are interrupting your experience and unfortunately, this scenario occurs most often online.
According to Dr. Volker Hildebrand, author of The Customer Experience Edge, “Customer experience is a holistic experience, and being able to offer a personalized approach for each customer can give your company a big advantage over the competition
.” Shoppers do not want to be served irrelevant ads. eCommerce ecosystems remedy this by providing an unsurpassed number of touchpoints with consumers from research to purchase.
Implicit Data vs Explicit Data
The metrics available to advertisers today has increased their demand for real performance and return on their ad spend. Advertisers want data driven success stories. However, not all data is created equal.
Implicit data is what we find on digital advertisers such as Facebook and Google. This type of data draws inferences from user data and makes suggestions of what to buy. Implicit data is often the culprit behind irrelevant ads.
To create customized experiences for online users, marketers must use explicit data. When we think explicit, all sort of brand safety concerns come to mind. But that’s not what we’re talking about here. Ernan Roman, president of ERDM and author of VoC Marketing, describes explicit data as, “self-profiled preference information customers provide in the Preference Center of a site or through dialogue boxes.”
An example of this on eBay is the My Garage tool. Users login to fill out the preferences for their vehicle. Everything from year, make, and model allows ancillary brands the opportunity to target a consumer appropriately. With this data, a customer can be served ads from insurance companies or auto part retailers that make sense.
A Better Ad Experience
Brands want their current and potential customers to remember them favorably. They don’t want to be associated with a pop-up ad that appears as a reader scrolls through an article about a recent tragedy. They also don’t want to be associated with ad units that seem almost impossible to close out of. Fortunately, shopping platforms provide a quality environment that prevents advertisers from annoying their customers.
As we approach the second half of 2019, marketers must resolve to use data wisely. Consumer patience is dwindling with every generic ad experience. In a 2018 Adobe study, 66% of consumers said encountering a poorly designed and impersonal ad experience would prevent them from making a purchase
. As consumer expectations increase, marketers will benefit from leveraging brand safe, explicit data available to them on eCommerce platforms like eBay.
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