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Shopify Pushes Further Into Social Channels

Shopify Pushes Further Into Social Channels
Hotspex Media Team

Shopify Pushes Further Into Social Channels, As The Hunt For Online Customers Intensifies

TLDR
  • Shopify announced an integration with TikTok on Tuesday, August 17, 2021
  • Social channels are the fastest-growing source of sales and marketing for Shopify merchants
  • More than half of consumers between the ages of 18 and 34 discover products on social media
Brief

Shopify's addition of TikTok joins Facebook, Google’s portfolio of apps and sites, Snapchat, Pinterest and more. Shopify doesn’t charge for the Channel integrations, nor does it take a cut of media, although, it retains a small percent of purchases. Merchant installs (a seller setting up an online storefront, or onboarding with the Google Merchant Center) increased by 76% in the US this year. Sales on those social channels are up 270%. Shopify also has an analytics hub that operates across its Channel partners, so they can see where traffic and sales are coming from.


Google confirms it changed how it creates titles for search result listings

TLDR
  • Google no longer uses the query to generate these titles but still uses HTML title tags 80% of the time.
Brief

Google has introduced a new system of generating titles for web pages. Previously, Google often used the query the searcher entered into the search box when formulating the title of the search result snippets. Google said it is now “making use of text that humans can visually see when they arrive at a web page.” Specifically, Google is now considering “the main visual title or headline shown on a page.” Google said this “update is designed to produce more readable and accessible titles for pages. Google wrote the search company is “already making refinements” to the new title system “based on feedback,” and it promises to “keep working to make it even better over time.” This might lead to more controls within Google Search Console for us to manage our titles in the Google search results better.


OOH On Its Way Up, Place Exchange Data Shows, eMarketer Confirms

TLDR
  • eMarketer expects U.S. OOH ad spend to increase 14.5% this year to $6.96 billion, but does not expect the media to be evenly distributed.
  • Marketers will transact about 3.9% of total OOH ad spend via programmatic this year. Spending on programmatic Video OOH advertising roughly doubled from second-half 2020 to first-half 2021.
  • Non-Guaranteed deals continue to dominate programmatic OOH buying execution, at about 90% of spend.
Brief

eMarketer calls programmatic a subset of digital outdoor advertising that accounts for about 12.5% of DOOH ad spend in 2021 and 16.4% in 2022. The report, which compares data from H2 2020 with the first half of 2021, shows signs of recovery from the pandemic. Top spending categories in H2 2020 were Government and Politics at 22% of spend, and Health and Fitness at 18% of spend. Food and Drink comprised 10% of spend. In the first half of 2021, the top-spending categories shifted to Food and Drink at 31% of spend and Personal Finance at 24% of spend. 

Billboards garnered 67% of programmatic OOH spend in second-half 2020, but other asset categories also attract material share such as Point of Sale at 10%, Kiosks at 9%, TV Screens at 7%, Display Panels at 4%, and Other like elevator displays and free-standing enclosures or bus shelters at 3%. In H1 2021, those numbers shifted to Billboards at 65% of Programmatic OOH spend, Kiosk at 11%, TV Screens at 10%, Point of Sale at 6%, Display Panel at 5%, and Other at 3%. The average cost-per-thousand-impressions (CPMs) across virtually all OpenOOH venue categories in PX rose from second-half 2020 to first-half 2021, between 10% and 30%.

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