Digiday is hosting a retail summit at the end of July and just opened a few complimentary passes for brand and retail executives. Interested? Apply here.
Facebook is continuing to woo fashion and beauty marketers with new ad and targeting options.
Positioning itself as the “new storefront for product discovery” Facebook introduced a series of new formats so retailers can cram more information into ads, basically turning them into catalogs. It’s also launching household targeting campaigns that allow marketers to reach entire families, rather than just individuals, based on information Facebook has that indicates its users are residents of the same home.
In practice, household targeting means that if, say, a couple’s teenage daughter had her eye on a particular beauty product for Christmas, advertisers can push the content to her parents.
Mockups of Facebook’s new dynamic advertisement overlays (courtesy of Facebook)
“Mobile, more than ever, will serve as a personal shopper,” said Martin Barthel, head of global retail and e-commerce strategy at Facebook. “With the rise of mobile, you basically have access to curated, highly personalized inventory. Think of all the fashion ads available to you on platforms such as Facebook and Instagram, where the essence of personal shopping is really embedded, and the discovery of brands and products is readily available.”
While Barthel said brick-and-mortar retail will not be completely irrelevant, a growing percentage of in-store purchases are made with the help of a mobile touchpoint. As he noted, 37 percent of all physical store transactions involve a mobile touchpoint first — such as consulting a brand’s e-commerce site for more information — and 70 percent of product research among consumers takes place on mobile.
Ad position: web_incontent_pos1
Last year was the first year more conversions were driven by mobile than desktop. What’s more, consumers shopping on mobile grew by 56 percent from 2015 to 2016. Black Friday alone raked in $1.2 billion in sales, according to data form Adobe Digital Insights, marking the first time in history that mobile devices drove more than $1 billion.
“Mobile provides both an opportunity and a challenge for marketers,” said Graham Mudd, product marketing director at Facebook. “The opportunity, of course, is to be where consumers are. They’re spending an enormous amount of time on their mobile devices, and for retailers to reach them, they need to be on mobile. The challenge, though, is the competition for attention is really quite fierce. There’s an enormous breadth of content and choice out there around how to spend that time.”
