2PM - Monday Letter: The Race For Helen

Performance and Advertising / Excerpt: It is “moves and counter-moves” as social media platforms continue to find work arounds to improve their advertising products. In the battle of privacy enforcement and consumer data collection, analyst Felix Krause recently wrote on how Meta and TikTok have used in-app browsers to collect key data points that are against the spirit of Apple’s recent iOS privacy practices (ATT).

This past Monday, we detailed Apple’s advertising strategy, which encompasses building a walled garden to benefit its burgeoning advertising business over that of the social media companies that were once the disruptors. This, while framing the narrative surrounding the changes to iOS as privacy-first. Now, in part four of this series, we’ll look at the ways social media platforms are responding to Apple’s crackdowns on data tracking. It’s a development that demonstrates just how little this has to do with consumer privacy. At the center of this back and forth is control, power and who gets to decide what companies get full access to our internet behavior. (Read More...)

Instagram can track anything in their in-app browser

Source No. 1 / Felix Krause: The iOS Instagram and Facebook app render all third party links and ads within their app using a custom in-app browser. This causes various risks for the user, with the host app being able to track every single interaction with external websites, from all form inputs like passwords and addresses, to every single tap.

Concerns over TikTok user data persist

Source No. 2 / Columbia Journalism Review: In July of 2020, TikTok, the popular video-sharing service, was deep in talks to sell itself to Microsoft, or possibly Oracle, after the Trump administration suggested that TikTok's Chinese ownership represented a national security threat. The president was said to be considering an executive order banning the app; ByteDance, TikTok's China-based parent company, reportedly considered [...]

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Shopify wildly miscalculated its bet on the 'new normal'

eCommerce / A:While the image used in [Lutke's] open letter showed a sharp fall in eCommerce interest, the reality behind the trend line is more subtle. We have designed the one below based on the census data that he cited. We have also projected out where we feel eCommerce will land as a percentage of all retail when the new census data is reported on August 19, 2022. More here: Shopify recently laid off 10% of its staff after miscalculating the pandemic's effect on e-commerce. Analysts said a similar scenario could play out again given investors' appetite for big bets. Many other tech companies bet that the pandemic's e-commerce growth would continue. For much of 2020 and 2021, e-commerce companies fully embraced the pandemic's "new normal."

Quarterly retail eCommerce sales (Q2 2022)

Follow Up / B: Total retail sales for the second quarter of 2022 were estimated at $1,778.6 billion, an increase of 1.9 percent (±0.4%) from the first quarter of 2022. The second quarter 2022 e-commerce estimate increased 6.8 percent (±1.1%) from the second quarter of 2021 while total retail sales increased 7.2 percent (±0.5%) in the same period. E-commerce sales in the second quarter of 2022 accounted for 14.5 percent of total sales.

Note: Our projected Q2 2022 sales percentage, issued on July 28, was on the nose. There was not a dramatic crash in eCommerce activity, online retail grew by every measure over that of Q1. It is of our opinion that major marketplaces like Target, Walmart, and Amazon captured the lion's share of eCommerce growth at a cost to Shopify. It inspired this recent memo on ads, marketplaces, and inflation. 

But while eCommerce penetration remains around 14.5% of total sales, 2022 saw the first-ever YoY shrink in eCommerce revenue, affirming Lutke's position that the online retail market was supposed to be 10% larger in 2022 but instead lost 2.5% of retail volume. 

The 'online mall' Simon has created for its outlet brands

eCommerce / Retail Touchpoints: A lot of new marketplaces have sprung up in the last few years, but even among that now dense crowd, Shop Premium Outlets (SPO) stands out. The first hint as to why comes from the platform's owner - mall operator Simon , with the added expertise of ecommerce authority Rue Gilt Groupe (RGG, encompassing Rue La La and Gilt) in which Simon is now an investor.

Inside the great mall rebrand

Retail Real Estate / Glossy: If you grew up in the suburbs, chances are you know the local shopping mall like the back of your hand; you spent weekends wandering the bright, maze-like corridors with friends, working your first weekend job in the food, court and getting everything from a haircut to a handbag under the one cavernous roof.

Brands like Chipotle and e.l.f. are chasing buzz on BeReal

New Media / Fast Company: BeReal, which launched in 2020, asks users to upload one post per day to provide a more authentic view of life for their friends. The photo prompts appear seemingly at random, and users have to send posts within two minutes of receiving the notification. It’s a novel take on social media, and one that’s captivated Gen Z: As of July, the app has been installed more than 20 million times, according to Sensor Tower.

Narvar teams up with fillogic to expedite product returns

Logistics News / WWD: Narvar and Fillogic have joined forces to help brands and merchants expedite the product returns process. "The partnership will leverage the combination of Narvar's end-to-end returns management solution and the Fillogic Hub Network as well as Fillogic's proprietary, state-of-the-art sortation and segmentation technology," Narvar said in a statement.

Streaming tv surpasses cable viewing for the first time

Streaming Economy / AdAge: Similarly, a recent report from Samba TV found that during this year’s second quarter, the three months leading up to July, linear TV consumption had dropped to a record low, with only half of the U.S. population tuning in compared to the 88% that used streaming platforms. That gap grew exponentially among audiences under the age of 35, who watched nearly 25% less linear TV than older demographics.