Today in Digital Marketing - Meet Amazon's New "Zero-Click" Ordering

Starting point is 00:00:00 You've got a hand, then you've got a wallet, says Amazon. Twitter's ad manager is a ghost town. More advice to spend less time chasing social commerce. Ogilvy opens a lab to create synthetic brand spokespeople. And the real reason negative product reviews flood Amazon in the first few weeks of each year. I'm Todd Maffin. Here's what you missed today in digital marketing. In 1999, Amazon executives had a problem. Two-thirds of shopping carts on their website were being abandoned.

Starting point is 00:00:34 The solution they came up with seemed positively mind-blowing at the time. One-click ordering. No cart abandonment to worry about. No confirming payment information. Just click and it was done. They got a patent for it. That patent expired in 2017. These days, Amazon continues to try to reduce friction, and a new test underway at their Whole Foods chain may send similar shockwaves across brick-and-mortar retail. One wave ordering. There's no need for a credit card or your phone, no PIN number to enter.

Starting point is 00:01:07 You literally just wave your palm over a camera, and that's it. Amazon calls it Amazon One, and it's in testing in around 200 locations, most of which Amazon-owned stores, but also a handful of other stores. It also does something else. It combines your loyalty membership into your biometric account. Think about the way you use a loyalty card now at a grocery store. You either scan your membership barcode or you tell the teller your phone number while they look you up. Merchants haven't exactly made this process easier because, well, it's not in their interest

Starting point is 00:01:40 to. A purchase without earning points costs the merchant less in the long run than a purchase with points. With Amazon One, you register your loyalty program information when you sign up for the biometric service, meaning payment and loyalty credits are part of the same process. Quoting Forbes, arguably Amazon is costing itself money if it ensures every prime member who checks out at Whole Foods gets the discounts they're entitled to. While some retailers might be happy when customers fail to claim discounts, Amazon is always focused on the customer. Amazon One not only allows a near-zero effort checkout, it ensures the customer is getting

Starting point is 00:02:18 the best possible price. This builds trust and emotional loyalty, unquote. There are other players in this space. There's a U.S. company called PopID that's testing facial recognition with restaurants and retail stores. MasterCard is testing facial recognition and hand scanning. But Amazon does have a track record of creating services for itself, then selling the technology off to others. So this is definitely one to watch. Even the rats seem to be jumping off the sinking ship now. Earlier this month, the New York Times reported that as of October, the number of

Starting point is 00:02:53 brands running ads on Twitter has dropped nearly 42% since May. Now, though, it seems that number may be much worse for Twitter. SimilarWeb, which tracks web traffic, says activity on Twitter's ad manager crashed nearly 74% in October compared with the previous year. Last month, which, remember, had Black Friday in it, was even worse. Visits to the Twitter ad platform fell 85% year over year. That's the largest drop in ad traffic since Elon Musk bought Quoting the Wall Street Journal, to decline with traffic volume now so low it doesn't even meet the firm's threshold necessary to track and measure it, unquote. As for the ad still there, it's a hodgepodge. One spotted read, quote, Britney Griner is a man, shocking proof, unquote. Some brands that had been hanging in there are now reconsidering their commitment to the platform after Musk over the weekend

Starting point is 00:04:03 called for the prosecution of Dr. Anthony Fauci, who helped lead the U.S.'s COVID response, and in the same tweet, managed to insult people who share what their gender is. Last week, Twitter reinstated the account of self-professed white supremacist Andrew Anglin, founder of the neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer. CNN reports Anglin has called for the destruction of Berlin's Holocaust memorial, replacing it with, quote, a statue of Hitler 1,000 feet tall.

Starting point is 00:04:37 Landing pages, and I'm talking about the scammy ones here, are full of crap. Testimonials from made-up people, breathless promises, and the ever-present countdown clock with its implied, you only have one shot to get this deal. I think most of us marketers try to stay away from that sort of nonsense, but a new update from WhatsApp might let us communicate scarcity without having to resort to the cheap antics. The app is testing view-once messages. This would give people one view of a message, and when they scroll away or close the app, that message is gone forever.

Starting point is 00:05:11 WhatsApp has similar features, the ability to have messages disappear after a certain number of hours or day, but this is even more limiting. While WhatsApp is doing this for privacy reasons, there are marketing opportunities here, like a discount code offered to people who chat with a brand representative, a code they can only see once, blocks any screenshots, and prevents the sharing or forwarding of the message. If this sounds a little familiar, it's because WhatsApp already has this functionality for photos and videos, they're just extending it to messages now. Definitely something you may want to play around with once it's launched more widely. cash back from over 750 stores on electronics, holiday travel, home decor, and more. It's super

Starting point is 00:06:06 easy. And before you buy anything, always go to Rakuten first. Join free at rakuten.ca. Start shopping and get your cash back sent to you by check or PayPal. Get the Rakuten app or join at rakuten.ca. R-A-K-U-T-E-N dot C-A. Do you have business insurance? If not, how would you pay to recover from a cyber attack, fire damage, theft, or a lawsuit? No business or profession is risk-free. Without insurance, your assets are at risk from major financial losses, data breaches, and natural disasters. Get customized coverage today starting at $19 per month at zensurance.com. Be protected. Be Zen. More signs that the online ad business will regenerate some HP in 2023. Three-quarters

Starting point is 00:06:54 of media agency executives in a recent poll say they expect overall spending to remain steady next year. Only 20% expect a cutback. The survey comes from insights firm Pixability. Some placements may see a big pickup. Most respondents expected their clients to spend more on connected TV and YouTube. 41% say they expect to see reduced spend on traditional TV ad campaigns. This tracks with other forecasts. The IAB says their numbers show CTV ad spending up 14% next year, and Magna Global predicts ad spending for video on demand should increase by a third.

Starting point is 00:07:30 Definitely good news for an industry that's felt a little beaten up this year. So while CTV places like Netflix and Disney Plus pick up some media spend momentum, the same can't be said for the social shopping space, at least according to a new forecaster from eMarketer. As part of their Trends and Predictions for 2023 event, the company said experimentation around social shopping has taught the industry one thing. We should go back to basics. And by basics, they mean running ads. Social shopping was expected to be a huge driver of sales with trends like TikTok made me buy it and live shopping streams on pretty much every platform that could live stream. But for some reason, despite social shopping being absolutely huge in some Asian countries, it never caught on in the Americas or Europe. An eMarketer analyst said, quote,

Starting point is 00:08:25 people are still clearly using social media to discover new products, discover new brands and connect with influencers. But even after clicking through ads, consumers aren't keen to adopt social media platforms proprietary tools, like checking out via Instagram or buying directly from live streams on Facebook, unquote. There is one exception to this rule, TikTok. eMarketer says it expects the platform to surpass Instagram in social buyer penetration and reach parity with Facebook at 37%.

Starting point is 00:08:56 Amazon has a fake review problem. I think we all know that. And to be fair, it's not just Amazon. It's anywhere reviews can be posted. But I'll bet you can't guess the category with the highest number of fake reviews. Phones? Nope. Computers?

Starting point is 00:09:14 No. Appliances and tools? Nope. The answer? Slippers. Yes, slippers for your feet. The phony review detection service FakeSpot says 71% of Amazon product reviews for slippers are fake. Other popular holiday items that are on Santa's naughty review list, sweaters, smartwatch bands, watches, back massagers, and earbud headphones where more than a third of reviews are fake. Quoting Forbes,

Starting point is 00:09:50 There's a strong incentive for brands to pay for reviews, particularly among Chinese-based sellers who are trying to join the competition with an undifferentiated product and zero name recognition. Fake reviews help boost a product's sales by an average of 16%. The biggest surge in bad reviews comes after the holidays, for products that were purchased in November and December, unquote. Amazon claims it has 12,000 employees working to keep nefarious behavior like fake reviews off their site. Incidentally, in case you're curious, among the categories with the least fake reviews, board games. And finally, the ad agency Ogilvy has launched Reality, a digital experience lab that is working on virtual humans, brand avatars, VR, NFTs, and so forth. The executive leading the new team said, quote, the industry is drowning in acronyms and umbrella terms that are confusing and misleading. Bringing the focus away from whatever the tech flavor of the month

Starting point is 00:10:46 allows brands to focus on what is going to drive real business growth, something that is needed more than ever in periods of slow economic growth. Taking bets now on how long our Christmas tree that we got over the weekend will survive. We keep our house really hot, and so trees tend to not last particularly long. But it gave us a chance to pull out the coolest Christmas tree lights that I have ever owned. They're called Twinklies. This is not a promotion. They didn't pay anything for it.

Starting point is 00:11:15 The way it works is they're LED lights. You string them up to the tree normally, just like you regularly would. And then you map them with your phone. You do like two or three passes on the tree. And then it figures out where every single light is in relation to the other. And then you can do these really cool patterns. You may have seen this on like TikTok or Instagram or something. It actually really works.

Starting point is 00:11:34 It's really, really cool. In our continuing quest to figure out what is after Twitter, we have added post.news to our social media. That joins Mastodon and our LinkedIn newsletter. You can follow us on all sorts of platforms. Just go to todayindigital.com slash social media or tap the link in the show notes. Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow.

Starting point is 00:11:52 Oh Christmas tree, oh Christmas tree How lovely are thy branches Oh Christmas tree, oh Christmas tree How lovely are thy branches. So when you do, always make sure you get cash back from Rakuten. And it's not just clothing and shoes. You can get cash back from over 750 stores on electronics, holiday travel, home decor, and more. It's super easy. And before you buy anything, always go to Rakuten first. Join free at Rakuten.ca.

Starting point is 00:12:40 Start shopping and get your cash back sent to you by check or PayPal. Get the Rakuten app or join at rakuten.ca. R-A-K-U-T-E-N dot C-A.

Today in Digital Marketing - Meet Amazon's New "Zero-Click" Ordering

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