Monthly brandtech blend – December 2019

Home Blends & Trends 20 December 2019

Every month, the fifty-five team features a selection of worth reading news and trends for you. So what’s been going on in the brandtech ecosystem recently?

Single’s Day and Black Friday: is the shopping frenzy growing or stumbling?

Singles’ Day in China seems to point to firm continued growth in popularity — propelled by online retailers like Alibaba — generating $38.4 billion this year, a 26% increase compared to 2018. With a total of 200,000 participating brands and 1.3 billion orders delivered, this annual event is crucial for brands. On the other side of the pond, the United States’ Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales showed more mitigated results. Although the numbers are still impressive with an average increase of 18% for both days ($7.4 billion online sales on Black Friday and $9.4 billion on Cyber Monday) some brands have opted out of the frenzy this year. A collective called “Make Friday Green Again” was even created in France to raise awareness among shoppers about the environmental impact of mass consumption and overproduction.

Read more about Black Friday in Forbes and about Singles’ Day in Jing Daily.

Amazon launches Amazon Web Services Data Exchange

The newest addition to Amazon’s suite of cloud products is here: AWS Data Exchange aims to offer Amazon’s cloud customers a way to securely buy and use third-party data. In the AWS marketplace, customers will be able to choose and leverage third party data sources from industry leading brands such as Foursquare, Place IQ or Change Healthcare. This development opens up location data analytics opportunities for brands. Though the marketplace is not yet designed to push audiences for targeting or user-level data enrichment, this could be a first step towards integration with Amazon Advertising or Amazon Retail Analytics.

Read more in ad exchanger, or in VentureBeat.

Stronger together: How US Media Groups consolidate offers to fight the Google-Facebook duopoly

A few months ago, Vox Media announced its acquisition of New York Media, the parent company of New York Magazine, The Cut, and Vulture. Then, one month later, Vice Media bought Refinery 29. In addition, Buzzfeed, Groupe Nine Media, and Insider have formed a video advertising alliance, and UK newsbrands have united under the Ozone Project. What does it all mean? The bottom line is that media groups are consolidating their offers to be more powerful and competitive, especially in digital advertising and faced with the supremacy of Google and Facebook. But the question remains: are brands up to the challenge of ensuring this strategy’s success?

Snapchat lures D2C brands with Dynamic Ads

Direct-to-Consumer brands, which are thriving on Instagram, are Snapchat’s new target: the Gen Z instant video app recently launched Dynamic Ads, its latest advertising product. This new feature enables marketers to create ads on the spot, directly from their product catalog. Ads can be created from templates and will update automatically as product availability or prices evolve. Snapchat has been moving towards a more shoppable environment and new ways to appeal to brands, and has seen a fair amount of investment already in the Discovery Ads.

Why tech companies have become the apple of advertisers’ eye

McDonald’s is buying personalization platform Dynamics Yields, Walmart is courting adtech company Polymorph Labs, and Nike is betting on predictive analytics company Celtics… Advertisers are acquiring adtech and martech companies en masse to reach their marketing goals and overcome some of their main adtech challenges. Brands are increasingly seeking to gain a competitive advantage by buying technology which only they will be able to use. In doing so, they also join in the fight against tech giants like Google, Facebook or Amazon.

Mere gadgets no more: The wearables market gets serious

The wearables industry is predicted to grow by 27% in 2020. A recent Gartner Study announced that total user spending will increase from $40.5 billion to $51.5 billion, with smartwatches topping the list of popular product types. And the growth won’t stop there: the market is predicted to hit $62.9 billion in 2021. The two other dominant categories are vocal assistants and ear-worn devices. As popularity goes up, prices are going down, with more and more competition coming from companies like Samsung and Xiaomi.