President Joseph Biden, in a sweeping executive order, is seeking to limit the power of big tech companies, including extra scrutiny of mergers and acquisition to check their monopolistic tendencies. It covers 72 different actions, including a reinstatement of net neutrality and asking the FTC to challenge prior “bad acquisitions.”
Bipartisan legislation being considered in Congress could force Amazon, Apple, Google and Facebook to either shed private-label assets or effectively split in two in an attempt to regulate them, the WSJ said. Congress is also looking at limiting their ability to use their platforms to improperly direct consumers toward their own offerings.
Apple’s launch of iOS 14.5, featuring its new privacy protections, has been championed by iPhone users tired of invasive ads, while advertisers frantically adapt to the changes, especially small businesses that rely on targeted ads. While challenging to advertisers, privacy is an important issue. Five weeks in, here are some key learnings.
Much to Facebook’s dismay, Apple’s planned privacy update to iOS 14 will prompt users to choose whether to allow Facebook to track their phone activity to provide personalized ads. This has left Facebook and Apple bickering like two siblings fighting over who rides in the front seat. Here are the implications for email marketing.
Even if your brand has a good website and a robust email distribution list, social media is still the crest of the mightiest wave. There’s no better way to expand your audience and find new customers. The question is, how do we capitalize on this juggernaut? What’s up for this year and what’s the best way to leverage it?
Social commerce is a great, cost effective way for merchants to expand channels and visibility. 36% of U.S. internet users say social networks have become as important as other information sources for making product choices and 70% of shopping enthusiasts say they turn to Instagram to discover products.
As 2020 comes to a close, it’s time to reflect back on a wild and crazy year in retail, to paraphrase the Festrunk brothers from Saturday Night Live. COVID-19 came in like a wrecking ball in February and March, causing widespread shutdowns that hit retail especially hard, leading to hockey-stick growth in ecommerce.
You may have read somewhere that 2020 was an extremely disruptive year in every aspect of the retail industry. Ecommerce, already on a rapid trajectory, took off into the stratosphere as consumer flocked online. To take a look into what we can expect in 2021, four experts offer their views and some bold predictions.
In a linkup of major players, ecommerce platform Shopify, with more than 1 million merchants, has partnered with hugely popular Chinese video sharing site TikTok. A new TikTok channel on Shopify lets sellers can set up, manage and track campaigns natively within the platform, accessing a global audience of 800 million users.
