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Brands go Direct To Consumer

DTC Brands

Brands continue to expand their Direct To Consumer footprint, with more than 40% of consumers reported to have made purchases directly from Brands in 2019. Combined with pressure from Amazon and Amazon Marketplace, traditional resellers are getting squeezed by both lower priced competitors and by Brands that are going direct to consumers and cutting the resellers out of the transaction.

In this environment it is critical for a reseller to make clear what value they add for their customer. Unless they can make a compelling story, the future looks difficult, with falling margins.

Brands go DTC

Walmart Sponsored Ads

Walmart

Walmart is the latest company to increase its focus on Sponsored search ads. Over the past year the number and cost of Sponsored ads on Amazon and Google have increased, and we should expect everyone else with a platform to follow suit in increasing emphasis on these ‘pay-to-play’ ads.

Why? It’s a source of revenue, and the Grocery store business model of slotting fees, stay fees and display fees has long shown that manufacturers and distributors will pay to get placement for their products. Online you can still get good placement without these, but usually by paying a different cost, such as price reductions or heavy SEO/SEM efforts.
This additional cost will put more pressure on reseller margins, and I believe ultimately shift more advantage to manufacturers, encouraging the shift to Direct To Consumer sales.

Walmart Sponsored Search Ads

2019 Holiday Shopping Trends

Adobe Digital Insights 2019

Online sales have exploded this year – Adobe reports Cyber Monday sales up 19.7%, after 19.6% growth on Black Friday. Amazon reported that Third Party sellers sold more items on Cyber Monday than in any 24 hour period of Amazon’s history. Shopify reported a 61% growth in sales for its merchants over the Black Friday / Cyber Monday period, with 69% of sales occurring on mobile devices.

Adobe Holiday Insights

BERT – Natural language search

Google logo

Goggle continues to improve natural language search with the latest update, BERT. Up to 10% of searches are expected to be affected. With a better understanding of what someone is searching for, the results should be more relevant. Search Engine Land has a good set of examples at the link below – taking into consideration terms like “to” in a search “brazil to usa need a visa” now will give results only for travelers going to the USA, where in the past results would have included visa information for both Brazil and the US as “to” was disregarded.
The good news is that you don’t have to make any changes to how you create content as the search will pick up the relevant content.

Welcome BERT

CCPA – Part 1

California

The regulatory burden of running a website keeps increasing… GDPR, now CCPA, next?

Deletion of customer data will become a big issue. I’ve already seen customers who want their entire customer history deleted, yet state tax authorities after Wayfair want to know exactly where customers are located (down to the street address) so their purchases can be taxed, so you can’t delete the data. Yes, the law allows an exemption for information legally required to be retained, but California clearly intended for customers to be able to remove their data, so what happens when you tell them that something can’t be removed because of another state’s law? The rules are not clear enough on this and there will be lawsuits over it – adding even more to the burden on companies.

Unintended consequences of CCPA enforcement regs

No-Knead Bread

No-Knead Bread - finished loaf

I like the recipe at Epicurious, get it here –No-Knead Bread by Jim Lahey

No-Knead Bread - step 1
Start with flour, salt and yeast
No-Knead Bread - step 2
Add water
No-Knead Bread - step 3
Hand mix, should be sticky
No-Knead Bread - step 4
Let rise 12-18 hours, will be bubbly
No-Knead Bread - step 5
Fold twice, let rest 1 hour, then flour. This was a double batch, so divide
No-Knead Bread - step 6
Pre-heat cast iron pots at 450 for 30 minutes. Place in pots and cover.
No-Knead Bread - step 7
Bake covered for 30 minutes, then uncovered for 15
No-Knead Bread - step 8
Let cool at least 1 hour
No-Knead Bread - step 9
Finished bread - you can add cheese or herbs if desired

Google’s new snippet settings give webmasters control over their search listings display

Google’s new snippet settings give webmasters control over their search listings display

Google continues to provide more options to control how your search results will appear. This looks to be part of their continued push for relevant content above all else.  Combining these new options with other recent snippet options can give you a radically different look than even a few months back – but of course you still have to place highly to have anyone see it…

Google’s new snippet settings give webmasters control over their search listings display

Google search adds key moments for videos in search

Google search adds key moments for videos in search

This new feature allows users to both see the key topics within your video without having to watch it first and to have a search result jump directly to the relevant section of the video. Should be very useful for users looking for how-to information. I predict that there will be more video results in position zero now, especially for mobile. Will the next step be playing the video snippet within the search result so no one has to leave Google search to see it?

 Google search adds key moments for videos in search

Amazon Changed Search Algorithm in Ways That Boost Its Own Products

Amazon Search Change

The only surprise here is that it’s so obvious. For many years Amazon has used Marketplace sellers to find out which products sell the best, and then offer those products itself – and Amazon’s offer always seemed to come up first… The long term problem is that if you are not offering relevant products to your customers, they will go elsewhere. Add this to the counterfeit product problem and the counterfeit review problem and Amazon has serious issues to deal with to maintain its reputation.

 Amazon Changed Search Algorithm in Ways That Boost Its Own Products

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