As of this Friday, Amazon will officially get on the bandwagon of retailers that now offer “Black Friday” deals well in advance of the actual post-Thanksgiving extravaganza.

The e-commerce giant last week announced that Black Friday deals will begin rolling out on Friday, November 17, and continue through Cyber Monday, with deals available across product categories and discounts as high as ~75%.

Kicking off the holiday sales event early has become a common practice among retailers, but Amazon until this year had stuck to the more traditional 48-hour window. Last year, for example, Amazon’s sales event didn’t begin until Thanksgiving.

“We’ve seen pretty much every retailer across the board doing these longer Black Friday sales,” Kristin McGrath, shopping expert and senior editor of RetailMeNot’s The Real Deal, told Retail Brew. “But Amazon ironically has been the most traditional about its Black Friday sale.”

Getting in on the action: Why now? McGrath said consumers are increasingly checking big items off their list earlier, and “Amazon probably wants in on that.”

Keep reading here.—AV

The holiday season—and gift-shopping season—is just around the corner. Keep your customers up to date (and make sure your business is ready for all of those shoppers) with Apple Business Connect.

Do your potential customers know how to support your business this gift-giving season? With Apple Business Connect, business owners can control how their biz appears to Apple users with just a few taps.

Apple Business Connect is a free tool for business owners that makes customization easy, from adding a logo and cover image to updating your holiday hours. All from your phone.

Get started.

Wouldn’t it be nice if, after all those bills, you opened up an envelope from the electric utility or oil company and it was a…check?

That is, in essence, what’s happening with retail media these days. Advertising, which for generations had strictly been an expense for major retailers, is now a major source of revenue, as brands dig deep to advertise on retailers’ e-commerce sites and apps to get better exposure with shoppers searching and browsing.

Retail media is here to stay, and it’s growing:

• Retail media spending amounted to an estimated $101 billion in 2022 and is projected to grow to $160 million by 2027, according to a 2022 report by Group M.
• Retail media spend accounted for 18% of digital ad spending and 11% of all ad spending last year, Group M found.

A new report from Skai, an omnichannel marketing platform, suggests that retail media is still growing like gangbusters.

Keep reading here.—AAN

Not all fashion retailers had a great quarter, but Ralph Lauren defied the odds and beat sales estimates in its fiscal Q2.

The American brand notched a 3.4% YoY revenue increase, earning $1.63 billion, up from $1.58 billion a year ago, and $24 million over analysts’ expectations.

Although the company saw a dip in its North American wholesale business, sales in Europe and Asia came to its rescue.

Keep reading here.—JS