Month: May 2019

How does link decoration work?
There are two main ways to decorate a link. The basic way is to statically attach the extra information to the URL when a link is created. Publishers typically do this in their email newsletters for links that point back to their sites. Instead of including a simple link like “http://www.example.com/article,” they will decorate the link to look like “http://www.example.com/article?referrer_source=emailNewsletter” in order to know when someone visited that page by clicking on a link in their newsletter.

The other, more complex way to decorate a link is to run some Javascript code that is triggered when a person clicks on a link and dynamically adds information to a link. Companies will do this when they want to pass information specific to the individual click that led someone to the destination site. For example, an advertiser might do this to track a display ad campaign that is running across multiple publishers’ sites and links to the advertiser’s site. Instead of manually customizing the link for each publisher carrying its ad, the advertiser can have the code add “?publisher=[name of publisher]” to the URL at the time when a person clicks on the ad. This way the advertiser can determine which publisher was responsible for sending the site visitor.

How is a site able to collect the information added to a link?
Sites run Javascript code that grabs the text of the URL, pulls out the query string and then analyzes the various query parameters, which are separated by the “&” symbol. Each query parameter is formatted the same way. There’s the label chosen for the information, an equal sign and then the information itself: “label=information.” Thanks to the uniform formatting, it’s easy for sites to process this structured data and use it however they’d like, such as by recording the referral source or storing the information in a cookie that serves as a unique file that the site can keep on each visitor.

Is link decoration only used to know the referral source for site visits?
Nope. Any information — technically, any combination of letters and numbers that represent information — can be attached to a link. For example, if you fill out a form online, link decoration can be used to pass the information you filled out to whatever page receives the completed form. You can see this when performing a Google search for, say, “digiday.” The URL of the search results page will include the query parameter “q=digiday,” which is added after the initial search query is submitted (the “q” is Google’s chosen label for “query”).

Is link decoration a new practice?
Not at all. While the exact origin of link decoration is unclear, link decoration has been used for years to pass information from site to site as well as from page to page on the same site.

So why are we talking about it now?
Because companies including Facebook and Google have been using link decoration to side-step the anti-tracking feature that Apple has added to its Safari browser and Apple is not okay with it anymore.

How are companies using link decoration for cross-site tracking?
Here’s a WTF article that breaks it down in depth.

Here’s the CliffsNotes version: Apple doesn’t like third-party companies like Facebook and Google track people on websites they don’t own, so it added an anti-tracking feature to its Safari browser. Facebook and Google found a workaround to Apple’s anti-tracking tool. They would use link decoration to attach information, which they could use to identify a user, to links they can control and pass that information to the destination site, which would cooperate by dropping a first-party cookie to store that identifying information for Facebook or Google to access through code stored on the site. To limit Facebook’s and Google’s ability to track people around the web through first-party cookies dropped via link decoration, it has decided to delete those cookies if it believes they were dropped via this method.

And here’s a video explanation if you’re the visual type.

Oh, so link decoration isn’t bad?
Nope, it’s just another basic web feature that advertising companies have appropriated to track people around the web. Just like the cookie.

The post WTF is link decoration? appeared first on Digiday.

Despite the steady offline march of online brands going into physical retail, Brandless has only run one temporary, experimental pop-up shop and hasn’t forged any partnerships with third-party retailers that would bring it into stores like Target, which has developed a strategy to sell DTC brands.

It’s because doing that would go against its entire value proposition, according to Tina Sharkey, Brandless’ co-founder and former CEO, who stepped down from the role in March but maintains a position as the co-chair on the company’s board. (Evan Price, the brand’s CFO, is currently serving as the interim CEO.)

“Consumption is changing into a lifestyle for customers, and we’re getting out in front of that by building for ship, not shelf, even if the shelf is the lion’s share of the industry right now,” said Sharkey. “Building for ship makes more sense — you can have price transparency, and you’re not competing alongside other brands and trying to manipulate customers into thinking they’re getting a better deal.”

Brandless is a lone wolf right now. Elsewhere, retail partnerships have flooded the DTC brand category. Particularly in the CPG space, wholesale is becoming more common: Native Deodorant and Oars & Alps sell in Target stores, while brands like Simple Mills and Hu Chocolate sell on Amazon and Thrive Market online. When Harry’s, which sells in Target and Walmart stores, launched a women’s brand Flamingo, it was exclusively in Walmart for the first three months.

But it has yet to be proven whether or not a company like Brandless — venture-backed, online-only — competing in the CPG space can scale without the infrastructure of a parent company or retailer behind it.

And Brandless doesn’t plan to budge: It doesn’t want to sell in stores, and the brand wouldn’t comment on whether or not it would consider an exit to a bigger CPG company, which would provide it with more stable resources to scale on its own. It wants to win over customers by itself, drawing them into its marketplace as other consumer startup founders and VCs repeat a mantra around meeting the customer wherever they are. It goes beyond the company’s core mission, which is to build a community of customers that are drawn to the brand for low prices clarity of choice rather than faced with deciding between countless versions of the same product.

It’s created a unique problem: Brandless’ own business model has essentially boxed it into a singular way of selling.

The $3 promise
Since launching in 2017, Brandless has promised price transparency, originally selling all products for $3. As it steadily built out its inventory, which now totals more than 400 products across the packaged foods, supplements, beauty and skin care, baby and kitchen accessories categories, some prices have inched up. A six-pack of diapers costs $9, while supplements, which represent the brand’s recent pivot to wellness, cost up to $15. That pricing structure would sink the brand in a retail environment.

Not to mention, Brandless’ positioning has pegged it as competitive to retailer private-label brands, which are seeing more investment as retailers like Target, Walmart and Amazon look to drive higher margins and more customer loyalty.

“If you launch with a specific pricing structure and offering, that dictates where you go over time,” said Kirsten Green, founder of Forerunner Ventures, which has invested in DTC companies like Glossier and Away. “On day one of starting a business, you should have a product that should be able to translate to a lot of different channels, by margin structure and category. Starting out with more doors closed than are open is tricky. It’s on an island.”

There are factors working against Brandless, which doesn’t share revenue figures. E-commerce only accounts for 3% of the grocery industry, and Amazon and Walmart are heavily investing in customer delivery, ordering and pick-up options, while Brandless has one channel. Brandless is also competing squarely against Amazon with an online marketplace that offers subscribe and save options, but lacks the same delivery speed and free shipping. Sharkey’s departure as CEO also set off speculation that something had gone awry.

“When Brandless has raised all that money, and the CEO is out, you have to wonder what the play is going to be. There aren’t many options on the table,” said a VC who has worked in the CPG category. “You’ll either see it at acquired by Albertson’s or they’ll have to open stores.” The brand declined to comment further on the conditions Sharkey stepped down as CEO, beyond her announcement.

Relying on data
Retail partnerships help insulate a brand from such headwinds by putting products in front of more customers. But Sharkey said that the brand’s ability to operate outside of the walls of traditional retail rests on customer data and relationships.

“CPG brands are disintermediated from their customers. They don’t know them,” she said. “We’re in relationships with the people we serve. Those companies are challenged right now, because they lack that relationship and they weren’t build to foster them.”

Sharkey said that customer data and feedback influences everything Brandless does, from product development to inventory assortment, to the distribution channels it chooses to sell through. At the same time that corporations are acquiring DTC brands, mass CPG brands are figuring out their own direct retail strategies, like Oreo and Dove, launching online sites in an effort to bring the end customer into the fold before routing through a retail partner.

“The CPG category is in a weird place. There’s always a chance that an interloper is going to come in with bigger funds and cut off your business,” said Jon Reily, the vp of global commerce strategy at Publicis Sapient. “And it’s not a category that really works in a vacuum, on an individual relationship. Nobody shops that way.”

Harry’s founder Jeff Raider, for example, has said that selling through Target allowed it to access customers that knew about Harry’s but didn’t want to buy razors or grooming products online. Last year, wholesale revenue accounted for 80% of Harry’s business.

As Brandless commits to building its business outside of existing retail stores, the path to growth that could meet its valuation leads down to roads: standalone retail, or a sale.

“Companies like Brandless can essentially thrive as long as there’s money to back them,” said Reily. “After the money dries up, you’re going to see a crash.”

The post ‘It’s on an island’: Despite headwinds, Brandless is making a bet on going it alone appeared first on Digiday.

“We’ve dedicated more spend toward influencer marketing. It’s about a third of our digital spend right now,” said Bose at the event. “It’s a license to go and figure things out because we haven’t got all the answers, but equally it’s something that we can bring back to the business with clear recommendations. We’re on a journey.”

That journey has already seen the advertiser start to take more control over how it works with influencers. Previously, an agency would have brokered the deal and managed the relationship with influencer Natalie Glaze, one of those who promoted Lärabar, whereas General Mills took the lead for the latest campaign. “We want to own that relationship, which is why we work with Natalie,” said Bose. More advertisers are building out their own in-house influencer marketing teams in an attempt to nurture long-term relationships with influencers.

Working with influencers directly should, in theory, make it easier for advertisers to understand how they perform. More than a quarter of advertisers believe measurement is their biggest obstacle when it comes to paying influencers, according to Digiday Research. It’s hard to attribute breakfast cereal sales and footfall in a supermarket off the back of an influencer marketing campaign, but understanding a digital footprint, brand uplift and engagement is more realistic. Importantly, this then needs to be incorporated into the wider reporting picture.

“There’s going to be more reliance on data when it comes to influencer marketing,” said Bose. “A lot of us are seeking out data metrics for more transparency and the need for ROI.”

His faith in influencers is a reflection of how important their younger, more impressionable fans are to the future of General Mills. Smaller, healthier food brands that were once considered niche are going mainstream thanks partly to how younger people are changing the way they eat. That taste for natural, organic brands was worth $1.06 billion to the business last year. Influencers are a way to help grow that segment faster in a CPG industry that has relied on selling mass-marketed, mass-processed foods, said Bose.

Working with influencers isn’t without its challenges, however, given the market is still getting to grips with tougher regulations amid growing cynicism from people in the wake of scandals like the Fyre Festival and the proliferation of fraud. According to a Universal McCann study of 56,398 internet users, only 4% trust influencers — even governments were seen as more trustworthy, per the study.

“The move toward longer-term partnerships will make measurement easier, as brands will be able to begin optimizing their briefs and content based on the performance of their influencer partners,” said James Silverstone, influencer marketing manager at We Are Social.

Advertisers are starting to take influencers seriously. Rather than treat them as just another way to sell directly to people with the same tried-and-tested messages, CPG advertisers like General Mills and Kellogg’s are starting to think more carefully about how those influencers can build advocacy over time. It’s why General Mills is more focused on micro-influencers over celebrities. And it’s why Kellogg’s is taking the time to try and understand the long-term impact of its work with influencers.

The post Why General Mills is spending more of its digital budget on influencers appeared first on Digiday.