US Consumers Want More Control Over Personal Data, Don’t Understand How It’s Being Used

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Nearly half of US consumers feel they have little to no control of their personal data, according to Deloitte’s “US Consumer Data Privacy” study. Marketers are having to perform a balancing act between personalizing offers and experiences based on consumers’ past buying behaviors and preferences while not creeping them out. From 2016 to 2018, the volume of breached records in the US rose twelve-fold, and as a result, about half of all US states are developing data privacy legislation—including the forthcoming California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), set to be effective January 1, 2020. Now more than ever, it’s important that marketers focus strategies on building consumer trust. 

Collecting data from consumers has served the industry three purposes: to learn more about consumers’ habits, communicate in personal ways and deepen relationships with frequent buyers. Retail executives in Deloitte’s survey state that the top uses of consumer data are efficiencies in operations (53 percent), improving product selection (52 percent) and enhancing in-store services and experiences (49 percent).

Despite how beneficial these efforts are for consumers, consumers still have their doubts as 47 percent admit they have little to no control of their personal data and one in three has been exposed to a data breach. Eighty-six percent believe they should be able to opt-out of the sale of their data. 

The good news: 71 percent of consumers are willing to share personal data if they receive special discounts or better pricing. What’s more, 73 percent of consumers said they’re more likely to be open or neutral about sharing personal data when satisfied with privacy policies, compared to 57 percent who are unsatisfied or unaware.

Consumers don’t have a clear sense of what information marketers collect and how they use it. More than two-thirds of consumers think they use the data for target marketing. Fifty-five percent of consumers believe advertisers sell data to outside buyers or share it with third parties. 

Retailers still face challenges internally over data storage. Nearly two-thirds of respondents say their organization has more than 50 information systems that store consumer data. Half of them indicate that inadequate data management is hindering their ability to implement consumer privacy programs. Lack of funding was the top reason cited.

For understanding consumers’ view of personal data and privacy, Deloitte surveyed US 2,000 individuals, conducted online using an independent research panel from April-May 2019. 

For understanding the executives’ view on the matter, Deloitte surveyed 201 retail industry C-level executives, senior management and senior directors in various retail organizations from US-based companies between April and May 2019.

Consumers Have Profound Concerns About Data Privacy And Marketers Should Care

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Social media and online usage may level off or decline over the next three years, according to an international study conducted by The American Marketing Association (AMA) New York—”The Future of Marketing Report, 2019: Techlash is Here.”

Despite the rise of social media usage in China, both Chinese and American consumers have profound concerns about hacking and loss of privacy, what AMA says has led to “techlash.” The study examines marketing trends in the US and China as well as media use evolution, consumer perceptions of forthcoming marketing innovations and data privacy.

Marketers have plans to embrace the future of tech as six in 10 American firms and three-fourths of Chinese marketers surveyed said they’ll increase their use of methods such as employee influencers, ad personalization, micro-influencers, the Internet of Things (IoT), smart speakers, omnichannel marketing, augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR). 

The US and China have divided opinions about these new elements. Americans expressed support for methods that can be voluntarily used (VR, omnichannel and artificial intelligence assistants) while 60 percent or more of Chinese favor all the innovations except micro-influencers. Both groups have anxiety over privacy, identity theft, hackers and bots and worry that new technology will detract the human touch from shopping. 

Still, both marketers and consumers surveyed expect online marketing and omnichannel commerce to dominate the landscape a decade from now. The other most frequent expectation among consumers in China and the US is that shopping and purchasing will remain a mix of digital and brick-and-mortar.

Despite consumer anxiety surrounding privacy and new ad technologies, the study notes that marketers aren’t taking these concerns seriously enough. 

To prevent “techlash from worsening, companies must amplify brand trust and also have a plan to remedy challenges posed by the escalating economic nationalism is China and the US. Responding to consumer concerns also means offering them full transparency regarding their data and emphasizing choice regarding technology while specifying which ones they can choose to use.

The AMA conducted the online survey with over 500 consumers and 500 marketers in the US in January 2019, and in China in March 2019.

Amazon Lures Ad Dollars Away From Duopoly With New Social Ad Measurement Update

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Amazon announced updates to its Amazon Attribution console, an advertising tool brands use to attract consumers via Amazon marketplace. The new addition offers advertisers a click-based solution to measure the impact of social media ad campaigns based on consumer discovery and research. 

Brands that sell products on Amazon have utilized the Amazon Attribution since it launched in beta last year. The console enables on-demand access to conversion reporting on sales attribution and return on investment (ROI), making it easier than ever to receive and analyze metrics on and ongoing basis. With streamlined access to sales impact analysis, brands can optimize their full digital media portfolio and live campaigns.

The recent social ad measurement update allows marketers to understand shopping impact across search, social, email, display and video media. The in-app tool will give brands insight into how shoppers are buying their products on Amazon.

In addition to enabling social measurement, Amazon is introducing bulk operations for Google Ads, which simplifies the tag generation and implementation process for these ads. Through Amazon Attribution, brands can automatically produce up to 100,000 attribution tags when they upload a single file with campaign information. After generating the tags, brands can download a file that contains all tags, reducing the time necessary to set up Google Ads campaigns.

Amazon Attribution launched with limited availability to vendors in the UK earlier this year, thereby now giving access to both the UK and US.

Prior to the Amazon Attribution update, the company’s advertising platform released a new directory in the US to help marketers discover agencies and tools that offer a range of advertising specialties. The “find-a-partner” directory offers two categories, managed-service providers and tool providers.

Amazon’s behavioral data offerings give direct-to-consumer (DTC) brands even more incentive to shift ad dollars away from Google and Facebook. Despite their revenues growing, the combined share of the duopoly dropped this year, according to eMarketer. Amazon’s US ad business is expected to grow 50 percent this year, with its share of the US digital ad market reaching 8.8 percent. 

In a new study, “Amazon Will Disrupt The Advertising Ecosystem,” Forrester predicts that Amazon’s explosive growth in 2018 will cause steeper demands from clients of the duopoly, as reported in Forbes. Forrester also sees consolidation of the ad tech landscape as one result of Amazon’s force. 

Excessive Notifications Are The Primary Reason People Delete Apps

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Smartphone users are multiplying but that may not improve brands’ chances of engaging with their customers given that apps are being deleted at a dizzying rate. Today, the primary reason people delete apps is that companies send excessive and irrelevant notifications, according to a study from Leanplum.

To win the hearts and wallets of consumers, brands must adopt an omnichannel strategy, one that prioritizes convenient and seamless communication with its customers. Yet brands are struggling to find the balance between keeping their users informed and ensuring they don’t over-communicate. More than 75 percent of millennials and more than half of baby boomers and Gen Z delete apps that annoy them with unnecessary notifications. 

To counter this, the research indicates that brands must be mindful of the number of notifications they send while also considering the time at which they communicate with customers. About two-thirds of respondents said they have a preference for when they receive notifications, though the findings are split between the morning, afternoon and evening. 

The data also shows that users who consistently disregard notifications find that financial and social media brands send the most useful notifications. Among a list of popular brands, respondents considered Facebook, Wells Fargo and Bank of America the best communicators via apps. Over 30 percent of those surveyed said they like to receive notifications for financial alerts and 87 percent said they don’t mind financial app push notifications.

Still, the survey revealed that email is the most-liked communication from brands across generations. Forty-six percent of people said they prefer notifications in the form of email while only 15 percent prefer push notifications. Moreover, 43 percent of millennials want to receive emails from brands compared to 28 percent of Gen Z. As for the type of companies people most likely open emails from, the majority selected messaging companies (54 percent) and financial emails (41 percent). A separate Survey Money study spoke to email’s good reputation among consumers when it revealed that in the past 12 months, 65 percent of people said they used email to communicate with organizations, compared to 60 percent the year prior.

“At Leanplum, we know that everyone has a personal preference on how they’d like brands to engage with them,” said Athena Koutsonikolas, vice president of marketing, Leanplum. “As evidenced by the survey results, there are even specific differences among demographics, including preferences on timing and frequency for email, in-app and push notifications. Brands that ignore these differences will ultimately not be able to engage with and retain their customers.”

Poor Quality Data, Fraud In GPS Signals Undermine Geotargeted Ad Campaigns

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Geotargeted ads are helping brands engage and influence consumers with contextually relevant messages. Or are they? It turns out nearly two-thirds of spend on location targeting advertising is inefficient due to poor quality data and mistargeted location impressions, according to a study from Location Sciences. 

The success of location-based marketing is dependent on the accuracy and quality of location signals brands use. Yet “The State of Location Advertising” found that 65 percent of spend on location advertising is outside of the targeted area or based on signals of insufficient quality to deliver targeting requirements. For every $100,000 spent on geotargeted ads, $29,000 delivered impressions missed the targeted area and $36,000 “was possibly wasted” as a result of insufficient location signals.

Without high-quality location signals, the performance of targeted ad campaigns is undermined. Mobile IP addresses are generally inaccurate for mobile location, making GPS data the top choice for advertisers in quick-service restaurants (QSR) and retail. While GPS is the most precise form of location data, the study shows that some app developers create fake GPS signals to increase ad revenues, with 36 percent of GPS-enabled apps found to display location fraud. 

In order to improve the performance and transparency of location-based digital marketing, advertisers should understand what they’ve purchased and the method used to deploy geotargeted ads. For example, knowing whether the ads are being delivered near the desired location, assessing the quality of the location data being used and determining if the location is actually improving the performance of an ad campaign are factors to keep in mind.

“As with all data, the key to improvement is transparency. Location quality improves significantly with transparency, enabling brands to ensure that the correct quality signals are being used to deliver targeting. Brands can enhance their ability to realize much better performance from location advertising by using the right vendor for them and understanding the data that is being used,” said Jason Smith, chief business officer, US Location Sciences. 

The analysis is based on 500 million digital location-targeted impressions delivered in the UK and US between January and June 2019. Data was collected via a tag embedded in digital creative directly from suppliers.

DTC Brands See Higher Click-Through On Mobile Versus Desktop, Study Finds

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Email marketing platform LiveIntent analyzed ad campaigns from a number of the world’s leading direct-to-consumer (DTC) brands, finding that these brands are experiencing higher click-through and conversion rates on mobile, compared to desktop.

Within the study, LiveIntent was able to determine that the click-through rate (CTR) for DTC brands was three times higher on mobile than on desktop and that the conversion rate for DTC brands was 50 percent higher on mobile devices than on PCs. The iPhone outperformed Android with three times more clicks and conversions.

“We’ve seen enormous growth from DTC brands over the past several years. DTCs are known for being obsessed with driving acquisition, subscriptions and purchases and the data shows that mobile is the best channel to do that. DTCs would be wise to optimize the entire sales funnel for this reality,” Kerel Cooper, SVP global marketing at LiveIntent noted.

The good news for DTC marketers doesn’t end there, as advertising on mobile also helps to reduce ad spend costs. In fact, the study found that cost per conversion (CPC) for DTC brands was 25 percent lower on mobile devices, compared to desktops. 

Among other interesting findings, LiveIntent reported that DTC campaigns perform with more efficiency in 2019 versus 2018, as the participating brands are seeing 25 percent more clicks and 35 percent more conversions this year. Also, per LiveIntent, women tend to respond to mobile ads with two times more clicks and conversions, compared to men. And DTCs for shoes and beauty perform the best, while DTCs for alcohol and education perform the worst. 

Finally, when it comes to content, according to the researchers, consumer-focused publications showed the most impressive results in terms of content placement. These include newsletters containing shopping tips, travel and general news. Ads placed within these content outlets drove five times higher conversions and clicks for DTC brands. 

“DTC audiences are real people, with interests like anyone else. True outreach to them requires real people-based marketing, meaning being able to connect with a known person with consistent messaging irrespective of device, channel and platform. DTC consumers tend to be present and engaged with lifestyle and consumer publications,” Cooper concluded.

Auto Trader Experiments With First Contactless Car Vending Machine In UK

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Auto Trader, the digital marketplace for used and new cars, debuted the UK’s first contactless car vending machine in London’s Spitalfields Market. The experiment comes after 89 percent of British consumers said price haggling is embarrassing and uncomfortable in a study conducted by the brand. The bespoke car dispenser is meant to raise awareness of Auto Trader’s transparent price offering and help buyers skip the dreaded price negotiation process.

The buy-and-go installation allows purchases up to £21,000 (about $26,000) via a custom-made point of sale system, key release function and integrated payment and door release mechanic. Inside the vending machine to start is a new Renault Zoe, which, according to Auto Trader, is one of the most searched for electric cars in the UK with 463,277 searches in the past month. Auto Trader priced the car at £16,000, a figure that has already been approved by the dealer. The no-strings-attached price tag reflects 68 percent of Brits’ belief that if cars were sold online, pricing would have to be clearer and more consistent, per the brand study. It took six engineers and three months to design and build the car vending machine.

“We’re showcasing a real-life version on what can be found on Auto Trader; brand new cars at transparent pre-haggled prices that you can drive away today. The only difference is that this Renault Zoe can be purchased at the touch of a card, testing London car buyers’ appetite for electric cars as well as a more instant purchasing future,” said an Auto Trader spokesperson.

Auto Trader’s car dispenser experiment follows the brand’s multi-million-pound integrated campaign in June this year that lived across television, radio, broadcast video-on-demand (BVOD) and paid social and display ads through July. The campaign’s 30-second video spot shows a mob of parrots obnoxiously squawking to mimic the conflicting opinions buyers face from friends, family and media when searching for a car. The campaign, called “Silence The Squawk,” was estimated to be seen or heard a total of 541 million times by about 74 percent of the UK’s adult population, according to a press release.

Marketers Lack Confidence In Adopting New Mobile Tech Features

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Marketers don’t feel prepared when it comes to implementing tech features that support mobile advertising, according to a new study from WBR Insights. While consumers are becoming increasingly familiar with technologies like augmented reality (AR), chatbots and mobile pay, 52 percent of respondents said they lack the ability to support these features. 

The findings show that retailers have been slow to adopt features that would improve mobile customer retention. For example, 41 percent of those surveyed said they only have a desktop website whereas 15 percent have all three tools to optimize customer retention—a desktop website, progressive web app and ecommerce app. 

Marketers would be wise to invest in mobile as a sales channel given that 29 percent of respondents said they’re making over half of their sales through mobile and 65 percent make at least a quarter of their total sales through mobile channels. 

As more consumers come to expect a streamlined, personalized shopping experience, retailers are forced to adjust their strategies to include technologies that are on the cusp of becoming mainstream. Still, the data revealed that marketers face challenges in incorporating tech features. When asked how prepared their organization is to roll out artificial intelligence (AI), AR, virtual reality (VR) and voice recognition, only nine percent felt they’re currently able to support these features. Less than half of respondents, namely 39 percent, said they’re close to being able to support these features.

Though marketers are ill-prepared to deliver deeper interactivity via advanced technologies, that’s not to say they don’t see the value that these features will create for customers. Within WBR Insight’s findings is a separate study from Vibes, “How New Tech is Creating Seamless Mobile Shopping Experiences” that shows which technologies are top-of-mind for advertisers. The three technologies that hold the most potential for improving customers’ mobile ecommerce experience, the respondents noted, are mobile payments (60 percent), chatbots/AI (48 percent) and the ability to order with same day delivery of goods and services (47 percent). Similarly, the current most broadly adopted new mobile technology is mobile payments followed by progressive web apps and chatbots/AI. 

As for technology that marketers have no interest in adopting, 63 percent of respondents named biometrics followed by 47 percent citing integration with wearables.

As technology improvement initiatives gain traction, so too do impediments to updating engagement strategies. The most commonly reported challenges that marketers cited when adopting new mobile technology are budget, lack of internal resources and lack of executive buy-in. In addition to budget resources lagging the advancement of mobile strategies, marketers are uncertain about which features to prioritize due to a lack of clarity about what their unique situation requires. 

Given that customers across all generations crave an experience that blends physical and digital, marketers must optimize mobile shopping to replicate a purchase process that closely resembles the shopping experience within a brick-and-mortar store. 

The digital survey was completed by 100 senior retail executives.

Mobile Plays Major Role In Back-To-School Purchase Decisions, Study Finds

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For consumers preparing for back-to-school season, smartphones play a number of important roles in the process from price-checking to photo references, according to a new study by AdColony.

AdColony’s first Back to School shopping survey reveals consumer sentiment in regards to purchasing decisions included buying for oneself. Data shows moms are more likely to go back-to-school shopping for their children than dads, at 62 versus 32 percent.

Thirty-eight percent of respondents said they prefer to shop both online and in-store, while 25 percent said they prefer to shop online. Seventy percent of these online shoppers turn to their smartphones, the study found. Mobile advertising is influential to consumers during this time. Just over half (53 percent) said they have purchased something on their mobile device directly from an ad. Seventy-five percent said they would purchase something on their mobile device directly from an ad if the product was relevant to them.

Even those that shop in-store use their phones, AdColony found, and the most popular reason (55 percent) is to compare prices. Shoppers also used their phones to receive special deals and promotions (47 percent), take a picture for reference (41 percent) and look up product reviews (40 percent).

Smartphones are also considered an essential school supply, respondents indicated. Nearly all (90 percent) are planning to buy a smartphone for students in middle school, high school or college. Even 20 percent were planning to buy one for their elementary school child.

The National Retail Foundation (NRF) predicts record-level spending of $80.7 billion for back-to-school in 2019, based on its annual consumer survey. College students planned to do 45 percent of their shopping online, and of all online shoppers, a majority are planning to take advantage of sales and free shipping.

The study was conducted via AdColony’s platform and compiles over 1,200 responses from North America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia-Pacific and Central and South America. Respondents were roughly 50/50 male vs. female with ages ranging from 14 to over 75.

Holler’s Branded Stickers Generate Millions Of Views For Snickers

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Snickers reaps the sweet fruit of its first sticker messaging campaign, launched in partnership with messaging tech company Holler (formerly Emogi). The campaign resulted in over 42 million views from tens of thousands of participants who included the branded, animated images and stickers within their messages across multiple platforms. 

According to the Holler case study, with the help of branded stickers, the candy brand was able to turn 61,318 consumers into brand advocates, and the creative content received a total of 42,888,113 impressions.

Per Holler, the most successful sticker, was “Excited,” driving the highest level of impressions and engagement. And in terms of demographic, the campaign reached the 25-34 age group the most, while the 35-44 demographic showed the most active engagement with the content. 

It’s not just cute fun at play here. According to consumer research, it’s not surprising that content and stickers that provoke feelings of excitement lead to higher engagement. Holler is using data, indicating that people who are excited are more likely to make purchases, to inform their business strategy and brand partnerships. 

AList shares Snicker' First Messaging Campaign

“By targeting people at a time when we know they are more likely to be influenced by a Snickers message, this allows us to deliver Intelligent Reach through a tailored message based on their online signals, and deliver Intelligent Conversion by providing a compelling offer when they are most susceptible. Given our findings that light buyers are even more susceptible to purchase when in an excited mood state, if we can identify and target these buyers we can use digital implementation to improve brand penetration,” Holler said in the report. 

Gary Arora, Global LaunchPad Lead, Mars Incorporated said in a press release, “Working with Holler is one of our first forays into the messaging space, which we’re very excited to dig into further. We saw incredible results from our first campaign, garnering 42 million views and converting 61,000 brand advocates across the platform. We are thrilled to be part of our customer conversations in an authentic way, and at the perfect moment in time. When folks are talking about needing an afternoon pick me up, Snickers will be there.”  

Although the partnership with Holler was Snickers’ first messaging initiative, the company has been relying on mobile technology and social media in general in its marketing efforts. For example, Snickers recently launched its debut micro-gifting campaign which allows fans to send a personalized message and gift redeemable for a Snickers bar at Walmart stores nationwide.