Online Marketing

According to a study conducted by Martini Media, luxury brands have been gradually dropping TV from their multichannel marketing mix in favor of digital media. But will the move pay off in the end? Digital darling Burberry seems to think so, quickly taking the throne of luxury online marketing by creating entirely new levels of customer engagement.

After years thinking of online advertising as qualitatively different from regular advertising, could it be that it often works similarly to print advertising? Possibly, if the results of a new study are to be believed. Analytics firm RapidBlue has determined that Google AdWords campaigns tend to increase visits to retail stores. The company, which places sensors in shops to anonymously monitor customer behavior, studied about 4,800 shoppers in Helsinki. The study showed AdWords campaigns increase "both brick-and-mortar retail [visits] and visitor dwell times by double-digit figures," the firm says.

Tommy Bahama, known for its beach-themed clothes and accessories, is launching a global e-commerce platform as it tries to boost its fledgling international expansion.

Consumers are increasingly looking to video to fulfill their information needs and Google is taking notice by allocating more of its search engine territory to video content and less to traditional web results. Although Google's integration of video has created more competition for plain-text results, it has opened the door for video assets to acquire coveted search engine rankings.

Zone pricing, the practice of selectively raising or lowering prices on products based on a variety of factors, is common in retail. Consumers, for the most part, understand there are differences based on factors such as real estate costs. People in the New York metropolitan area, for example, expect to pay more for a Big Mac in Manhattan than they would in the suburbs. But they are not likely to be as understanding if retailers are charging higher prices for goods or services based on criteria that is less clear. 

Do you consider yourself a connected consumer? Is your laptop next to your tablet and smartphone on your couch or nightstand? Maybe you have a go-to device for browsing and shopping? Zmags published a new report that reveals consumers don't turn to mobile apps for shopping, but do have device preferences when shopping different retail categories. The report also sheds light on the popularity and potential of tablet and Facebook shopping.

Furniture retailer IKEA is coming out with a new TV set that allows viewers to purchase advertised products with just a few clicks of the remote control, according to GigaOM.

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Conventional wisdom suggests that putting a mobile ad as close to the point of sale as possible is, for all the obvious reasons, the smartest local mobile targeting method. Geo-fencing and location profiling are, after all, two of the hottest areas of mobile ad tech right now. We presume that proximity aligns best with either intent or opportunity. Suprisingly, the highly geotargeted campaign of banner ads and mobile circulars actually enjoyed higher clickthrough rates when the user was furthest from a RadioShack.

The popularity of daily deals—emails or mobile notifications that offer a discounted local service or product—shows no signs of abating.