EP257 - Cookies, IDFA, and Commerce Deep Dive
Changes in mobile tracking (IDFA), and browser tracking (third party cookies) are likely to disrupt digital commerce. Here is everything you need to know.
Background
Privacy Law Changes
- California Consumer Privacy Act of 2020 (CPRA)
- California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 (CCPA)
- EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)
Third Party Cookies
- Safari (19% share) 3P cookies blocked as of March 2020
- Firefox (4% share) 3P blocked as of Sept 2019
- Chrome (64% share) will block 3P January 2022
Mobile Tracking (Digital License Plates for Mobile Users)
- Apple Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA) – Goes from Opt Out to Opt In Q1 2021
- Google Play Services ID for Android (GPS ADID) – Still Opt Out
Use Cases that are impacted by IDFA/3P changes
- Audience Activation and Retargeting
- Frequency Capping and Suppression
- Media Attribution
- Audience Insights and Segmentation
- Personalization
Alternative Solutions
- 1P Walled Gardens (Facebook, Google, Amazon)
- Real ID Systems (Trade Desk, Liveramp, Epsilon)
- Clean Rooms
- Cohorts – Google Privacy Sandbox: FloC (Federated Learning of Cohorts)
Impacted Businesses
- Google – Biggest winner, built a business based on relaxed privacy standards, now pulling the ladder up behind them
- Apple – See Google, but with a smaller share of browser market
- Facebook – Lose ground to Google/Apple but gain on everyone else
- Amazon – Winner. Forcing more ad dollars to Amazon walled garden
- Shopify – Loser. Forcing Facebook to capture more commerce instead of referring to Shopify sites.
- Publishers – Loser. Harder to make ad model work
- Other Retailers – Loser for customer acquisition, slight benefit for retail media networks
Conclusion
Advertising rates go down which depreciates ad based business models (content sites and games). More businesses pivot from ad based to paywalls. Greater focus on Customer Lifetime Value (via subscription and platform approaches), more cleanrooms. Much harder for new businesses to challenge incumbent walled gardens.
Episode 257 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded live on Wednesday March 17, 2021.
Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing.
EP256 - Colin Bryar former Amazon Chief of Staff and author of Working Backwards
Happy episode 256, our penultimate 8-bit episode! (we’re going to have to migrate to 16-bit for next week).
Colin Bryar is author of “Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon” (affiliate link). This is the definitive book about the unique processes, programs, and culture implemented at Amazon which have enabled its remarkable track record of speed and innovation. Colin had a 12 year career at Amazon and served as Jeff Bezos technical advisor (chief of staff) shadowing Jeff in all meetings for a year. His co-author, Bill Carr ran Amazon Prime Video and sat on Amazon’s S-Team. These two had a front row seat to many of the most seminal moments in Amazon’s history.
If you work with Amazon, need to compete against them, or just want to duplicate their success in another field, you owe it to yourself to listen to the episode and then read Colins book.
Episode 256 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded live on Wednesday February 24, 2021.
Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing.
Announcement: Live Clubhouse Chat: Shopify vs Amazon
Wednesday night March 3rd, 9:30pm ET we'll have a live chat on Clubhouse discussing the epic battle between Amazon and Shopify. http://joinclubhouse.com/event/M4knLWBy
Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing.
EP255 - Instacart Chief Revenue Officer Seth Dallaire
Seth Dallaire is the Chief Revenue Officer at Instacart. In this interview, we cover his experience at Amazon, the challenges of operating Instacart’s 4-sided marketplace, key trends in the digital grocery space, and Instacarts evolution as a retail media network.
Episode 255 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded live on Wednesday, February 10th, 2021.
Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing.
Episode 254 is a breakdown of Walmart and Shopify Q4 2020 earnings reports, a recap of 2020 sales data from the US Dept Commerce, and Amazon News.
2020 Sales Data
US Dept of Commerce released it’s retail data for December, which gives us a full picture of 2020, as well as the Q4 e-commerce data.
- Retail sales in 2020 were $5.6T, representing 27% of the U.S. GDP
- Retail as a whole experienced healthy growth of 3.4% versus 3.5% in 2019
- E-commerce grew 32% to $792B in sales, vs 15% growth in 2019
- E-commerce was 14% of all retail sales (vs 11% in 2019)
- Jason wrote a detailed recap of 2020 in Forbes:
2020: Not Quite Retail Apocalypse, But Great For E-Commerce
Walmart Earnings
- US Q4 comp sales grew 8.6% eCommerce sales grew 69%
- FY revenue was $559.2 billion, comp sales increased 8.6%, E-Commerce sales grew 79%
Shopify Earnings
- Fourth-Quarter Revenue Grows 94% on GMV Growth of 99%
- Full-Year 2020 Revenue Grows 86% on GMV Growth of 96%
- FY Subscription Solutions revenue grew 41% to $908.8 million,
- FY Merchant Solutions revenue grew 116% to $2B
- Shopify Expands Its Checkout System to Facebook and Instagram
Amazon news:
Episode 254 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded live on Thursday, February 19th, 2021.
Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing.
https://retailgeek.com
EP253 - Amazon Q4 2020 Earnings
Amazon Earnings
- Amazon reported in Q4 2020 earnings on Tuesday Feb 2.
- Jeff Bezos is stepping down as CEO and moving into an executive chairman role. Read his letter to employees here.
- We deep dive into the Q4 and full year 2020 results.
- Sales, profit, and free cash flow were all above expectations. US product sales had a robust 44% YoY increase. 3P continues to grow as a share of sales (now 55% of sales mix). AWS continued to grow.
- Other income (which is largely ad sales) was up 66% representing $21.477B of revenue in 2020, well above expectations.
In other news:
- Walmart is accelerating it’s automated picking for store fulfillment.
- Uber has purchased Drizly for $1.1B. We spoke with the VP of Partnerships at Drizly on Episode 163.
Episode 253 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded live on Tuesday, February 2nd, 2021.
Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing.
EP252 - Amazon FBA Roll-ups w Chris Bell CEO of Perch
[NOTE: The audio quality of this episode is not up to our usual standards due to some internet challenges. But we felt the content was valuable enough to publish the episode anyway.]
A number of firms are acquiring, or some would say rolling up, brands that primarily distribute their products on Amazon using Fulfillment by Amazon. By some accounts, these firms have cumulatively raised over $1B in capitol, and are rapidly acquiring brands.
This week we explore this trend, with the founder of one of these firms, Chris Bell, CEO of Perch. Chris sees Perch as a next generation CPG conglomerate leveraging the Amazon marketplace. While traditional CPGs may review their pricing quarterly, and set marketing strategies annual, Perch adjusts pricing strategy hourly, and advertising strategies daily.
“Amazon marketplace is 2x any CPG and growing faster.”
CHRIS BELL, CEO OF PERCH
In this interview we cover:
- Overall trend, and how Chris sees the marketplace
- Perch criteria for acquisitions
- Synergies for brands in the roll-up model
- Off Amazon strategy
- Potential risks of this model, including from Amazon
- What the potential future of this market looks like
If you’re interested in selling your FBA business to Perch, you can reach them at info@perchhq.com.
Episode 252 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded live on Wednesday, January 27th, 2021.
Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing.
EP251 - 2021 Annual Predictions
2020 Recap – Predictions made on episode 204
2020 Predictions Recap
Scot
- Shopify wilts a bit – new competition comes out with different angles (marketcap stays static) – No
- Fedex does something drastic – buy eBay? Merge with Alibaba? No (but shoprunner for 0.5)
- The year of returns – “happy returns” – a startup raises $100M+ in space. No (but 0.5 for year of returns)
- Mallageddon continues At least another 8k stores Yes 8721 stores +1
- Google gets aggressive in ecommerce Yes +1 (Bill Ready, etc…)
Score 3/5
Jason
- Walmart – growth slows due to completion of grocery build out. Marc Lore leaves Walmart. No on growth, yes on Marc Lore (0.5)
- Amazon – Opens affordable grocery concept. Digital grocery wars heat up. Yes
- Owned brands continue to grow. 5% of retail in 2019, could be 8-10% in 2020 (as measured by IRI, for CPG private label). Yes
- Installment Payments heat up – At least one company is acquired (Affirm, Afterpay, Klarna, QuadPay, Sizzle) Yes (IPO’s)
- Digital in-store heats up, QR codes make a comeback Yes
Score 4.5/5
2021 Predictions
Jason:
- Made to Order apparel business > 9 figures
- Retailer offers viable health alt insurance option to consumers
- Grocery E-Com > 10% someone deploys(not pilots) MFC
- Amazon Shopify Competitor (shipping solution)
- Retail Media > $20B
Bonus – More store closures in 2021 than 2020.
Scot:
- Amazon move to same day prime by opening a huge wave of neighborhood DCs (near DSPs)
- Shipping (Shopify) – launch own DSP
- Shopify marketplace
- ‘zero friction addiction’ sticks – I’ve seen 30-40% repeated a lot, I think it’s 60-80%. commerce penetration says at 16% or better in 2021.
- spac/ipo? Dnvb wave
Bonus: post-covid anti-consumerism/materialism wave
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Episode 251 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Thursday, January 21st, 2021.
Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing.
EP250- Holiday 2020 Recap
This week we recap the commerce results for Holiday 2020 (including the data sources you can use to get a read for yourself), give an update on #shipageddon, and cover some industry news.
| 2019 | 2020 | YoY %Ch | |
| Stores | $864.69 | $822.79 | -4.8% |
| Online | $140.28 | $190.47 | 35.8% |
| Total | $1004.97 | $1013.26 | 0.8% |
Nov-Dec Sales estimates from e-marketer $B
- November Retail Sales Aren’t As Ominous As You Think Jason's article in Forbes, recaping the results we've seen through November.
- Consumer Trends 2021 report - Dan Frommer's recap of 2020 consumer trends (highly recommended).
- MasterCard Spending Pulse
Shipageddon Recap:
Episode 250 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded live on Thursday, January 7th, 2021.
Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing.