Although voice tech isn’t new, using it for ecommerce is a relatively recent development. The hands-free approach is novel, but consumers remain skeptical. When voice tech was first introduced, there were obvious capacity limits. Now, there have been significant improvements to enable voice commerce thanks to machine learning and AI.
Ecommerce technology provider Stackline has received $130 million in funding from UK-based private equity firm TA Associates, on top of a $50 million investment from Goldman Sachs’ growth equity team in November, using it to create new products, pursue foreign markets and look ahead to an IPO.
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.
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.
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.
Global Privacy Control focuses on letting consumers opt out of the sale of their personal data to third parties. The early-stage coalition includes the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Mozilla. Rob Shavell, CEO of Abine, who was involved in Do Not Track and now GPC, discusses what’s ahead and why merchants should get on board.
The U.S. Department of Justice, joined by attorneys general from 11 states, has filed an antitrust lawsuit against Google alleging it used its market power to thwart competition in search and advertising, setting up a battle on the level of the 1990s federal action against Microsoft.
Amazon has received approval from the Federal Aviation Administration to operate its delivery drones beyond visual line of sight of the pilot, removing a key roadblock to its eventual goal of deploying aerial fulfillment for Prime customers in less than a half hour.
Ware2Go, a UPS-owned provider of fulfillment on demand through partnership with warehouse owners, via an integration with Google Shopping, lets merchants offer free shipping early in the search and discovery process on Google, aimed at increasing conversion. Ware2Go handles fulfillment through its partner network.
Google has been busy on the ecommerce front lately, announcing a plan to drop commission fees for sellers who use its Buy on Google checkout service, while making its pilot-tested product recommendation engine publicly available to let sellers display more personalized offers.