The retail apocalypse may have a silver lining after all: Malls are now being repurposed as startup incubation hubs.

Mall operators are teaming up with startup programs to offer startups co-working spaces, networking and mentorship possibilities. In November, the Pennsylvania Real Estate Trust and incubator 1776 will open a retail incubator inside the Cherry Hill Mall, and for the past three years, Westfield has been using space in the Westfield San Francisco Centre shopping mall to connect startups with member retailers.

With big-box retailers closing stores, operators are exploring new uses for mall spaces to cope with a six-year high in mall vacancy rates in the U.S. — reportedly 8.6 percent in the second quarter of 2018. Beyond giving new digital companies an entry point to the physical retail world, companies can test products with mall customers.

“It’s another twist on how people are looking at the retail shopping experience; customers can connect with local purveyors of goods, and startups can offer a lot of things in a limited space,” said Jennifer Maher, CEO of 1776.

The 1776-Pennsylvania Real Estate Trust incubator will be housed within 11,000 square feet of space within the Cherry Hill Mall. It’s currently soliciting interest from startups. Heather Crowell, svp of strategy and communications at the Pennsylvania Real Estate Trust, said she hopes the incubator will help introduce some concepts that started online into physical retail spaces.

For Philadelphia-based food startup Simply Good Jars, a member of the 1776 network, co-locating in a physical space would offer opportunities to test how a direct-to-consumer product strategy would work. The company, which is in discussions with 1776 about co-locating within the mall space, currently offers its products through vending machines placed inside properties of companies with which it partners. Founder Jared Cannon said a physical outpost would let it experiment by directly offering its products to customers.

While the pop-up shop is a tool for larger retailers to extend their reach, it lets smaller companies operating within an incubation space test customer comfort with products without the burden of a longer-term lease. Meanwhile, retail technology companies can test new tools in a controlled setting.

“It’s [about] being able to show what clothes look like before you try them on, and you can test augmented or virtual reality [tools] — people like to experiment and see these kinds of things in person,” said Jeremy Kagan, managing director of the Eugene Lang Entrepreneurship Center at Columbia Business School.

Beyond product testing and a marketing lift for new brands, mall-based incubators offer networking opportunities with large, established retailers. Bespoke, Westfield’s retail innovation hub within the Westfield San Francisco Centre, connects entrepreneurs with resource people in the broader tech and retail worlds. About 80 companies work from there on a given day, including direct-to-consumer startups, business-to-business retail tech companies, venture capitalists and innovation teams from larger brands. Member companies include VoiceLabs, a company that develops home-based voice applications in the home, AR and VR platform iStaging, and online fashion retailer Original Stitch.

“Westfield San Francisco Centre is at the heart of retail in the city, so it’s an ideal location for the retail and tech marketplaces to converge, learn from each other and innovate,” said Bespoke director Judith Shahvar. “We offer networking specific to retailing and attract global retailers who want to learn from the technology our members are building and the services they’re launching.”

Westfield has held more than 350 events since Bespoke was established. Through it, larger companies are matched with startups to address specific pain points, and retailers that are part of the Westfield network can work with the startups to pilot technologies and services.

Though mall innovation labs offer opportunities to breathe new life into vacant mall spaces, it’s important that the tools and products rolled out by the startups go beyond marketing gimmicks and actually add to the mall’s role as an innovation space, Kagan said.

 

 

The post Online retailers are using empty mall spaces to test products appeared first on Digiday.

Publishers Clearing House still brings oversized physical checks to houses across America. But the company’s Prize Patrol, as it’s called, also films a live show for Facebook every week at PCH’s Long Island headquarters.

The weekly show, which had its one-year anniversary July 30, has tallied 4.9 million views from more than 2 million fans who tune in for the trivia, shout-outs and the chance to win something from a prize wheel.

The post Publishers Clearing House is surviving the ad duopoly by selling engagement appeared first on Digiday.

A year ago, controversial YouTuber PewDiePie uploaded a video titled “SPONSORED BY VOLVO” in which he says, “This video is sponsored by Volvo, by the way. Full disclosure.” That video wasn’t actually sponsored by Volvo, according to a Volvo spokesperson.

Volvo was unaware of the association with PewDiePie, who became engulfed in controversy in February 2017 after uploading videos that featured anti-Semitic barbs, until late last month when Digiday contacted the company. “Volvo Cars has not sponsored PewDiePie and have nothing to do with the post you are referring to,” a Volvo spokesperson wrote in an email on Aug. 2. By that time, the video had garnered 8.8 million views.

It’s somewhat clear from the video that Volvo did not pay for it, or at least that the company probably didn’t get its money’s worth. In the video, PewDiePie records himself playing a video game. At one point, he finds a car in the game to drive that he refers to throughout the video as a “Volvo” (though it’s not clear if the vehicle is actually a Volvo). That and PewDiePie’s statement around the video’s 11:50 mark that “this video is sponsored by Volvo” are the only inclusions of the company in the video.

“There is no way this is a paid partnership,” said Gabe Gordon, managing partner of Reach Agency, a creative agency whose work includes content sponsorship deals between advertisers and influencers.

On Aug. 3, more evidence popped up to indicate Volvo did not sponsor the video. After Digiday emailed the business representative listed on PewDiePie’s channel to ask about the video’s Volvo claim, the video’s title was changed to “SPONSORED BY SAAB,” though its description still cites Volvo as the sponsor. PewDiePie’s representative didn’t respond to Digiday by press time. “We do not have a sponsor relationship with him and had no knowledge of that YouTube video prior to your email,” a Saab spokesperson emailed.

So why would PewDiePie claim the video to be sponsored by Volvo and then Saab? It may be an example of a tainted influencer trying to curry favor with advertisers. “Some micro-influencers will literally lie about sponsorships to be more attractive to brands,” said Buck Wise, a WPP executive who manages partnerships.

Aware that advertisers often take their cues from other advertisers in decision whether to work with an influencer, PewDiePie may have thought that other advertisers would see the Volvo video as a sign that the controversy is over, Wise said.

Volvo isn’t the only major brand to become associated with the YouTuber since his widely publicized scandal. Digital video analytics firm Tubular Labs — which brought Digiday’s attention to the Volvo video after tracking the recent performance of PewDiePie’s other sponsored videos — found videos that PewDiePie has uploaded after the Volvo video that claim to be sponsored by LG and Huawei’s Honor. A spokesperson for Huawei did not return a request for comment. An LG spokesperson confirmed that its home electronics division had sponsored the video that was uploaded on June 22 but was unaware of the controversy surrounding the YouTube star.

“PewDiePie’s people contacted us and requested an OLED TV and, in return, he would produce an episode on the product. The team here in Korea was aware of PewDiePie’s popularity but not so much his controversial past. I brought the team up to speed, and there won’t be any more activities between LG and PDP going forward,” the LG spokesperson emailed.

LG’s response is surprising given the widespread coverage of his scandal in outlets like The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times and the vetting that advertisers typically do before striking deals with influencers. Advertisers or their agencies will at least run a Google search to see an influencer’s history, Gordon and Wise said. Additionally advertisers will often perform background checks, which Gordon said can cost a mere $60.

“He is the most infamous YouTuber there is. I don’t know how you don’t do the homework to figure that out,” said Mike Henry, CEO of video analytics firm OpenSlate.

The post Big brands are still sponsoring controversial YouTuber PewDiePie, sometimes unknowingly appeared first on Digiday.

Amazon is quietly streamlining its ad business so that advertisers will be able to buy campaigns from the same place, whether they sell their products directly to the site or directly to its shoppers as third-party sellers.

The retailer has tried to remove the differences between how first- and third-party sellers manage campaigns for some time, but it’s now going a step further. Four media executives said Amazon is working on a consolidated platform that will fold all campaign reporting and advertising products from the Amazon Media Group, Amazon Marketing Services and Amazon Advertising Products divisions into one place.

Amazon’s ad business is hard for newcomers to navigate with different divisions for businesses that sell to Amazon and for those that sell their own products on the site.

“Reps from Amazon have told me a consolidated version of its ad platform is on the way,” said one of the executives, on condition of anonymity. “Amazon’s business is manageable once you know how the platform works, but there are more brands who sit on both sides now, which makes having such a disparate offering harder for them to manage.”

During the company’s earnings last month, Amazon CFO Brian Olsavsky referred to barriers to growing media spending when he hinted at changes to make the ad buying process more “usable” and “automated.” Advertising helped deliver Amazon’s second consecutive high-profit quarter in the first quarter after years of unprofitable or low-profit quarters — despite many big brands still having reservations about how much of its inventory they should buy. We’ve asked Amazon for comment; we’ll update this article if they respond.

Those hybrid sellers could feel the biggest impact from the change. They often run paid search programs on both sides of Amazon’s marketplaces but have to be careful because the two platforms can compete to artificially increase bids, according to media buyers. A unified data set will help those brands avoid this issue.

Long term, Amazon centralizing its branding, content, product creation, merchandising and advertising should make it easier for brands to see the total traffic to their products and where it’s coming from, said Tod Harrick, vp of products at Marketplace Ignition.

“We believe Amazon’s primary goal is really to unify two different software tools that were built separately to create efficiencies,” Harrick said. “This happens at Amazon all the time. Amazon experiments so much that sometimes it ends up with multiple solutions for the same need and eventually will try to resolve those duplications.”

Having a central marketplace for advertisers would be the culmination of Amazon’s efforts to give first- and third-party sellers access to the same features. The most recent example is currently being tested. Those that sell products to Amazon are testing detailed data-based reporting, including a customizable graph to track trends across campaigns and metrics such as order counts. The test started days before Prime Day, according to a dashboard seen by Digiday.

“Ultimately, an advertiser wants a complete and consistent view of how campaigns drive new business, and a consolidated platform helps deliver that,” said Kevin Packler, director of Amazon Services at advertising agency Tombras. “As Amazon’s ad business grows, I expect we’ll see more options come online as the platform evolves and expanding in a consistent way will only enhance Amazon’s value proposition.”

The hope is that more advertisers buy more ads from one place. Amazon generated $2.2 billion in its latest quarter, while Google and Facebook posted $28 billion and $13.3 billion respectively. For all the hype around Amazon’s ad business, it is still in the “awkward toddler stage” compared to its more mature rivals Google and Facebook, said Gareth Owen, managing director at digital agency Roast.

 

The post Amazon to merge its ad businesses into one platform appeared first on Digiday.

Smartphone sales are falling globally, but a Chinese tech giant whose devices most Americans can’t even buy is doing booming business, while nipping at the heels of Apple.

The biggest breakthrough in AI, deep learning, has hit a wall, and a debate is raging about how to get to the next level.

Microsoft’s cheapest Surface yet tries to be both laptop and tablet, but doesn’t quite nail either one, writes David Pierce.

The U.S.-China trade fight has put South Korea’s Samsung Electronics in an uncomfortable spot. Its challenge: to manage its ties to both countries without getting caught in the crossfire, even as U.S. tariffs threaten its sales of home appliances and device components.

Twenty-year veteran Christie Cordes, founder of Ad Recruiter–whose stellar list of clients includes Sony, Jaguar and Xbox/Microsoft–shares her five essential questions. Can you tell me which social communication platforms you participate in and what you find useful or unique about each? That allows the employer to suss out a candidate’s social media prowess and assess…

During CBS Corp.’s quarterly earnings call last Thursday, Les Moonves sounded like his usual ?ber-confident self, making his typical boasts to investors about “record results,” “another very strong quarter,” “another terrific upfront” and “another great schedule this fall.” But the CEO and chairman was only able to maintain his braggadocio because no one on the…