Month: May 2021

The key details:

• The next frontier for digital video advertising appears to be shoppable content, with a few companies either touting new capabilities or upcoming opportunities in this space.
• Media companies increasingly drew attention to the contextual and identity targeting ad solutions, in light of the imminent death of the third-party cookie.
• Presentations featuring pop singers like Miley Cyrus and Billie Eilish — during YouTube’s and Vevo’s presentations, respectively — as well as actors like Morgan Freeman and influencers like Cassey Ho made it clear that media companies believe star power can draw advertisers’ interest in aligning with digital video content.

YouTube

YouTube’s 10th annual Brandcast was a star-studded event, pointing to the influence and culture that lives on the video-hosting platform. Stars ranged from the Brandcast host Hasan Minhaj to a concert by Miley Cyrus to YouTube creators with millions of followers, like Kurt Hugo Schneider and Cassey Ho, who all moved around a sound stage with different sets being built and broken down around them. The presentation put a focus on elevating YouTube creators and their diverse voices and passions via the content they create for the platform. The Brandcast aired different segments based on attendees’ pre-selected interests and business goals.

YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki pinpointed areas of focus for the company this year: investing in the “living room experience” (120 million people streamed YouTube or YouTube TV on big screens in December 2020) and production innovation (with a call-out to short-form video feature Shorts — YouTube’s response to Instagram’s Reels and TikTok — expanding in the U.S. and rolling out globally this year).

Combining the two areas, YouTube plans to roll out more interactive ad products on CTV, according to Allan Thygesen, president of Americas at Google. The first among them will be Brand Extensions, which will let people click on a CTV ad in order to send a corresponding link to the brand’s site or app to a person’s phone or other device. The ad format will roll out globally by the end of this year.

YouTube also introduced a new option within its YouTube Select program, in which the platform curates a selection of creators’ and publishers’ channels for upfront advertisers. This year, advertisers in the U.S. will be able to buy seasonal sponsorships focused specifically on what’s prominent in culture during that time, like Black History Month, Pride Month or Mother’s Day. 

And, of course, the platform promoted a new slate of original shows. Upcoming YouTube Originals include: a six-part unscripted series following actor Will Smith on his fitness journey, a new intimate documentary series with Alicia Keys premiering this summer, a docu-series that explores issues around racial inequity through the lens of hip-hop jewelry called “Ice Cold” and a special around Asian and Pacific Islander culture, bringing together celebrities, chefs, activists and creators.

Condé Nast

Condé Nast global CRO and president of U.S. revenue Pamela Drucker Mann touted the magazine publisher reaching 65 million viewers each month this year. But the publisher is not only pitching its audience reach but also a new ability to push product.

Through Condé Nast Shoppable, people watching the publishers’ videos will be able to click on featured products, such as those worn by celebrities, models and influencers and directly purchase them. “It’s not just an ad-on or a QR code,” Drucker Mann said. This feature will be integrated into shoppable series like Vogue’s “7 Days 7 Looks” and “Beauty Secrets” and GQ’s “Grooming Gods.”

Speaking of shows, Condé Nast is bringing back 75 series and 50 new pilots across 17 of its titles. That includes a relaunch of Vanity Fair’s video channel and a documentary series based on the title’s recent expose on Hillsong church. Vanity Fair will also expand into audio with the launch of “Dynasty,” a podcast on powerful families, starting with the house of Windsor. Architectural Digest will have three new series, with a focus on sustainability, with hosts like Maison Trouvaille founder Erick Garcia and Bon Appetit test kitchen star Brad Leone. Vogue will dive deeper into wellness content, starting with a show with Kendall Jenner and YouTube Health to explore mental health “through the lens of fashion,” according to Agnes Chu, president of Condé Nast Entertainment.

The company also announced the launch of a new GQ linear channel coming later this year; it’s unclear whether the channel will be distributed on traditional TV or free, ad-supported streaming TV services. GQ’s dedicated sports outlet, GQ Sports, experienced triple digit audience growth in 2020 with over 21 million views on YouTube, according to Condé Nast, and the company is already highlighting its plans for next year’s Super Bowl, which will include a live episode of GQ’s video interview series “Epic Conversations.”

Condé Nast is continuing to turn some of its coverage into film and TV licensing opportunities, such as “Escape from Spiderhead,” a sci-fi thriller film for Netflix adapted from George Saunders‘ short story, which originally appeared in The New Yorker. “Last Chance U: Basketball” is another one going to Netflix. It’ll be a spinoff docu-series of the Emmy Award-winning college football series based on a 2014 GQ article.

The Met Gala is returning this fall, with new live programming, after last year’s event was cancelled due to the pandemic. Part one, “In America: A Lexicon of Fashion,” will open in September, and part two, “In America: An Anthology on Fashion” will open in May 2022. The Vanity Fair Oscar party will return in 2022, with more custom video content and series.

A+E Networks

NewFronts newcomer A+E Networks has launched a portfolio of free, ad-supported 24/7 streaming channels since late 2019, providing new opportunities for revenue and audience growth for the network.

Ethan Heftman, svp of advanced advertising and digital sales at A+E Networks, said the goal for the company is to distribute its content “wherever consumers want to access it.” He added: “We can’t control which platforms people use so [we are] going to get content and brands anywhere and everywhere they’re consuming media.”

That was the big message for the company during its first NewFronts presentation: “TV everywhere,” the approach adopted by A+E Networks that makes its content available on its owned-and-operated sites and apps, traditional and streaming pay-TV services and ad-supported streaming services. Outside of its streaming networks, A+E executives also discussed audio and social audience growth and opportunities for advertisers, as part of that “TV everywhere” concept.

As for upcoming programming across A&E, Lifetime and the History Channel, actor Morgan Freeman appeared in the presentation and plugged his upcoming series with History, called “Great Escapes,” which will explore some of the “most daring prison breaks.” “Lincoln” is a documentary series coming soon that will also span experiential and digital content on the former U.S. president. Paul Cabana, evp and head of multiplatform programming at A+E Networks, said the company will expand its daily content, with shows like “This Day in History,” flash briefings on smart speakers and short-form content on air or online.

Stacie Danzis, vp of digital media sales at the company, touted 137 million downloads of A+E Networks’ apps. The company draws in 9 billion video views across all digital and social platforms annually, she said, and CTV makes up 60% of its big screen viewers, while video-on-demand makes up 26% of its viewership. Danzis also noted recent efforts by the company to employ female filmmakers, placing women from all backgrounds in front of and behind the camera.

Tegna

Also a newcomer to the NewFronts, local broadcaster Tegna said it published more than 700,000 pieces of digital content and delivered 24 billion impressions for advertisers in 2020, via its 64 local media properties across the country. Digital consumption reached nearly 70 million unduplicated average monthly visitors to Tegna digital platforms consuming 7.8 billion minutes of video. 

Tegna announced the expansion of its attribution solution to measure performance of linear TV and streaming campaigns. The company will provide industry-specific performance data for the automotive and tourism industries. Advertisers in these categories will have access to sales data and metrics for campaigns placed with Tegna and Premion, a CTV ad solution for regional and local advertisers. TEGNA Attribution is partnering with IHS Markit to launch the auto ad solution in early summer 2021, and with Arrivalist to use its geo-location intelligence data to provide location attribution solutions for vacation and tourism advertisers. 

Verizon Media

Hot off the news of its sale to private equity firm Apollo Global Management and rebrand to “Yahoo,” Verizon Media brought in its CEO Guru Gowrappan (who will continue to serve as CEO of the new company) to address the new situation (wearing a jacket emblazoned with the Yahoo logo, still with the exclamation mark that will soon be dropped as part of the rebrand). “To continue our success, we’re taking the best of Verizon and carrying the learnings… into a new company which will be known as Yahoo,” he said.

Verizon Media was another company to bring up the opportunity in shoppable video which Marinn Jackson, vp, head of premium sales & strategy at Verizon Media, said grew 40% in the last year. She also discussed the future of immersive content, branded content, AR ads and other experiences beyond the more commonplace flat world of digital.

Verizon Media went through its content offerings under its Yahoo news, finance, sports and fantasy sports verticals, and Jared Quay Campbell, Yahoo Sports host, sat down with NFL quarterback Russell Wilson. Yahoo reporter and host Brittany Jones-Cooper outlined the array of ad products available to advertisers who work with Verizon Media, available via its demand-side platform. Two solutions were called out in particular, in preparation for the upcoming cookie-less future: ConnectID, which is built on first-party identity data to target up to a half billion users across mobile, CTV or digital out-of-home, according to Jones-Cooper, as well as its contextual targeting product, Next-Gen Solutions.

Myles Udland, Yahoo Finance anchor, also brought up Verizon Media’s partnership with Cooler Screens, which replaces the glass doors on coolers with digital screens that can show ads. It will span 2,000 screens, reaching 55 million customers by August, according to Udland.

CTV stats

Reports by the IAB and Tremor Video shared during Tuesday’s NewFronts sought to play up the opportunities for advertisers in digital video and specifically connected TV. The IAB’s “Video Ad Spend 2020 and Outlook for 2021” report said digital video advertising is expected to represent more than half (56%) of total video spend projected in 2021 and that CTV saw its highest gains to date in ad spend in 2020 — 22% growth year-over-year.

According to the IAB report:

• Nearly three quarters (73%) of CTV buyers report shifting budget from broadcast and cable to CTV in 2021. 
• Advertisers, on average, spent $20 million on CTV in 2020, and more than a third (35%) of buyers expect to increase CTV video ad spending in 2021. 
• Nearly half (46%) of advertisers cited targeting as a key benefit of CTV.

According to the Tremor Video report:

• 35% have tried a new CTV streaming platform since the pandemic
• 62% watched more TV on-demand since the pandemic

“Pet anxiety is real, and we also have anxiety about separating from our pets,” said Paul Guyardo, president and CEO of the pet insurer Petplan, which covers consultations with veterinarians to diagnose and treat separation anxiety as well as medication and various types of therapies aimed at calming the nerves of fur babies.

Not everyone will have to separate from their four-legged loved ones though. More and more employers, acknowledging the role pets play in the happiness and mental well-being of their employees, are considering creating pet-friendly offices. Banfield Pet Hospital in Vancouver, Washington, ran a survey which found that half of 500 C-suite executives would allow pets upon the return to the physical workspace, while 59% said they would allow more flexibility for workers who want to remain remote because of their pets. 

At Petplan, pets in the workplace are a given. So are rules with the return to the office, like a maximum number of pets allowed, social distancing (for employees and pets), and certain days for cats versus dogs. “Companies should be responsible and set guidelines,” said Guyardo.

Guyardo leads a team of about 200 employees, 86% of whom are millennials — a generation that is especially devoted to its pets, with 76% of the group owning animals, according to a Banfield study which surveyed 1,500 pet owners. A total 42% of the millennials in the study plan to hire a dog walker, take their pet to daycare or do some combination once they return to the workplace. For pet owners who wish to bring their pets to the office, 38% are worried their pet will experience separation anxiety. One in three millennials say they will consider looking for another job post-pandemic if their workplace is not pet friendly, per the same report.

While companies like Petplan have always welcomed pets, others are doing so as a direct result of the pandemic.  

Many employees of the software company WeInvoice adopted pets over the past year. “We felt that allowing pets [back to the office] would be the best way to ensure productivity isn’t compromised due to the risk of pet separation anxiety,” said founder Eden Cheng. “We also recognized that pets help create a healthy and positive work-life balance, boost customer perception, and also help lower employee turnover in the long term.”

Like Guyardo, Cheng has laid down a number of rules, requiring vaccinations, liability insurance and training, as well as keeping pets confined to a special space in the office to ensure “no one feels forced into this new workplace culture.”

Milo — a kitty whose dad, Norman Guadagno, is CMO at the marketing technology company Acoustic — has, like many other pets, become somewhat of a star during the pandemic, making regular appearances on Zoom calls. “Maybe we are all codependent, but I know that returning to an office, even part-time, will likely cause stress for Milo and me,” Guadagno said. 

Acoustic is still formulating its back-to-the-office policy — including its position on pets. (Guadagno said Milo is lobbying for a “cats only” policy.) But that doesn’t mean pets aren’t part of the corporate culture — Acoustic even maintains a Slack channel dedicated to employees’ critters (Digiday Media does as well). 

“Having dogs in an office enables people to interact in a relaxed and friendly way,” said Dr. Darcia Kostiuk, a veterinarian with the petfood brands Orijen and Acana, who said taking her own dogs to work supports her mental and physical well-being.

“The good news is the human-animal bond is resilient and it has only strengthened during the pandemic,” she added. “You can find comfort in that strong bond and know pets will adapt gradually.”

Kostiuk has the following advice for employees who will be forced to separate from their pets during the workday:

A slow transition into new routines is best: Prepare pets by mimicking the new routine ahead of time. For example, leaving the house earlier than usual or gradually increasing the amount of time pets are left alone.

Don’t succumb to overemotional hellos or goodbyes: Pets will pick up on it. Calm greetings and departures are always best. To help with goodbyes, have a toy or treat ready several minutes ahead of time to distract them when you are leaving for extended periods of time.

Maintain an exercise routine: Daily walks or playtimes may be a little shorter or occur at different times, but exercise contributes to physical and mental health, for both pets and their owners. Most cats prefer short bursts of play, so they likely won’t mind if their play times start occurring at different times of the day.

Explore pet day cares or dog walkers. The extra activity will alleviate some of their stress due to a pet parent being around less often, and the exercise will benefit their overall health. Or, get creative and explore a neighborhood initiative where pets alone at home can be cared for by neighbors. 

Event panelists include designers Bobby Berk, Malene Barnett and Jonathan Adler, as well as educators from Parsons and the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD), Taubman College at the University of Michigan, and USC Roski School of Art and Design, who will appear in pre-recorded conversations along those magazine titles’ editors. Session topics include the importance of nature, building design business, and designing for a better world.

The goal for Design U is meant to appeal to interior design professionals and design students as well as the magazines’ readers, all of whom are able to attend the event for free. Hearst claimed several thousand guests have registered but declined to say exactly how many. Keeping in mind a range of viewers, Hearst designed the content around balancing consumer content and business-to-business content.

Each of these magazine brands report having professional designers among their readers, but Veranda editor-in-chief Steele Marcoux said that even those who are classified as “design enthusiasts” versus professionals will find the program valuable. “This platform will almost serve as adult education for them, where our other content is maybe more inspirational or something to escape into,” she said.

While the master class is the formal kick-off to Design U, the individual magazines will populate a new site designed for the program with original and aggregated written content and webinars, which will be added periodically throughout the year by their writers and editors. The microsite will also have a free and a classifieds section vetted by editors for students looking for their first jobs and internships in the design world. A second master class-style event will also take place in the second half of the year, said Jenn Levene-Bruno, CRO and vp, group publishing director for the Hearst Luxury and Design group.

“We envision this as a real design destination and resource for the design community that we are building,” Levene-Bruno said.

Ahead of the Wednesday event, Veranda led a six-week elective course at SCAD where about 40 students participated in a mentorship program that had them designing outdoor living spaces under the guidance of designers including Scott Shrader and Wambui Ippolit. Broken into four groups, the students designed mock-ups of backyards and gardens that focused on environmental impact, sustainability and food growth, and relaxation in urban areas. The final projects will be shared during Veranda’s master class panel. The terms of the partnership with SCAD were not disclosed.

The students did not get college credit for participation, but were given access to professionals in the space to learn about an area of design that is not otherwise taught in the university curriculum, Marcoux said.

“So many designers have so much more to offer to students and when we’re interviewing them for our typical content, we’re not really engaging with them from that point of view. Since we’re creating content for [Design U], it will challenge us to engage with our designers in a new way that will produce some exciting material,” said Marcoux.

This is the second time these Hearst titles were leveraged together for a joint program and sponsorship opportunity at this scale, said Levene-Bruno. The first event, Design Unites, was a charity auction for Habitat for Humanity that took place in April 2020.

Longaberger and Obakki are new to advertising with Hearst’s Luxury and Design group, according to Hillary Koota, executive director of partnerships and brand development, who was the lead on Design U. The program also brought back Kohler and Design Within Reach as advertisers for Hearst after a couple of years without the brand as an ad partner.

As advertisers look to make the most out of their media buys, both in the midst of a pandemic and in the looming cookie apocalypse, buyers say that anything publishers can do to gain more scale in their offerings is appealing. 

“I think it’s all about the combined firepower of all those titles,” said Alice Sylvester, a partner at Sequent Partners. “The four titles and their own audiences combined will expand the reach potential of the message exponentially, so conceivably that’s [four times] as much attention being paid to the effort.”

It’s been a week since iOS users started receiving notifications that they could turn off cross-app tracking and, unsurprisingly, it’s difficult to draw any meaningful conclusions so far. What is clear is that ad execs will need to get creative to solve user consent challenges within the walls of the Apple App Store. People aren’t fans of sharing the data in the Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA) with their favorite apps it seems. 

“We see a trend of more non-IDFA users across our portfolio of games and the ratio goes up to 20% of users with an IDFA and around 80% of those without it depending on the ATT screen implementation and user acquisition strategy,” said Jean-Sebastien Laverge, SVP of Growth at mobile game publisher Tilting Point. “The speed at which those users increase varies by game — specifically the policy they’ve taken for the ATT screen notification.”

It’s a similar story elsewhere in the market.

Less than a third of the bid requests tracked by Blis, a mobile ad tech vendor, over the first three days of ATT’s rollout had an IDFA attached compared to 70% that didn’t have the mobile identifier.

The numbers were backed by Bigabid, a mobile DSP that works with app developers, over a similar period. 

“The consent rate of users who are allowing tracking is around 33% based on the limited view I have on apps,” said Ido Raz, president and founder of ad tech vendor Bigabid who spoke to Digiday, six days after the rollout.

Now, these stats must be taken with a pinch of salt. Not least because not every app developer has been proactive at adopting support for ATT. Indeed, many apps don’t appear to have been updated yet and therefore are not allowed to access IDFA on the device under iOS 14.5, Blis concluded. It goes some way to explaining why opt-in rates will differ by market. 

In the U.S., for example, nearly half (46%) of the traffic on those devices that could receive the prompts opted in to sharing their data whereas in the U.K. and Australia those rates dropped to 19% and 13% respectively, Blis observed.

“But even the best-case scenario we’re seeing in the U.S. still means advertisers are losing around half of your ability to identify iOS users,” said Aaron McKee, chief technology officer at ad tech vendor Blis. “Losing half your reach on such a value audience is not a great situation to be in.”

And there’s the kicker. For all the caveats around the numbers, they don’t make for good reading — even at this early stage. 

In fact, it’s worth noting that Blis was only seeing around 1.3% of its total traffic coming through on iOS 14.5, which introduced the ATT update, at the time. For context: that rate is growing at around 50% per day.  

“This will be an early red flag to advertisers that are relying on media buying strategies based solely on retargeting mobile ad IDs, as they stand to lose anywhere from half up to 80% of their reach,” said Blis CEO Greg Isbister in a statement. 

No wonder so many advertisers are on the fence about what to do next. As it stands, they don’t know enough about advertising with fewer or no mobile identifiers to confidently make a call on what to do next. Even if they had a plan they’d be hard-pressed to properly execute it when so much of the wider market is underprepared. 

There are ad tech vendors that don’t even have SKADNetwork IDs so their ad partners can’t work with them on reaching ATT traffic, said Sergio Serra, senior product manager for the supply-side platform business at ad tech vendor InMobi. Meanwhile, some measurement partners aren’t properly set up to receive conversion data on Facebook campaigns, said Shumel Lais, CEO of mobile advertising intelligence business Appsumer.

Still, it’s not as if any of this will be a surprise to those who have been watching preparations for ATT closely. 

As game-changing as ATT is, many ad tech bosses haven’t spent too much time on a problem that might happen until it does. Moreover, they have no idea how aggressively Apple is going to enforce ATT. It’s why fingerprinting still persists as a workaround to the revamped privacy rule. 

“Most advertisers aren’t prepared as they should be for ATT but then again there’s not much they could’ve done because they haven’t had enough information to act on,” said Lais.

This list of known unknowns is as long as it is varied. 

There’s a privacy threshold, for example, on certain data advertisers are meant to get back from the SKADNetwork so that they can measure campaigns. The problem is Apple hasn’t been clear on what these thresholds are and it could mean some SKAdNetwork data doesn’t include post-install conversations. 

Not to mention the fact that neither marketers nor publishers don’t have access to which users “allow” tracking vs. those who don’t. While they can see changes in conversion rate, they won’t know how much to attribute to users not consenting to be tracked versus normal fluctuations in click to install rates.

“We wouldn’t make any immediate strategic changes to audience targeting or campaign optimization at this point,” said Bruce Tissington, paid social lead at media agency Space & Time. “We’re trying to prepare our clients for all eventualities so that we can pivot our strategies quite quickly if required. At the one-month point, we expect to better gauge any impact.”

With so much at stake, it’s no surprise that marketers err on the side of caution when it comes to ATT. 

“To be honest, this is something we need to navigate carefully so we’re going to step forward slowly on this one,” said the chief media officer at a CPG company on condition of anonymity. “We need to take our time to digest the decisions being made and potentially the reaction from legislators. There’s just so many shades of gray at the moment.”

This lack of confidence is clearest in where advertisers are spending their dollars. Clearing CPMs (winning prices) was around 10% lower on iOS 14.5 versus iOS 14.4 on day three of the ATT rollout, according to Blis. It suggests that there is much less competition on iOS devices that can receive those ATT notifications. 

This decrease in competition appears directly proportional to whether a mobile identifier has been supplied, which could be a sign that many buyers have not adjusted their strategy in anticipation of changes they’ve known are coming since the middle of last year.

“Right now we’ve seen a 30% drop in CPM rates between those users with the IDFA and those without it,” said Laverge. “That’s going to increase.”

But it’s still too early to say when that dip in ad rates will bottom out. As George Eames, senior director of mobile operations at Fluent explained: “We have seen slight drops in click to install rate across iOS. In one to two weeks, we should have a lot more data and be able to accurately determine the change in click-to-install conversion rate.”

Despite the murky outlook, many app publishers have done what they can to absorb the costs. This includes prioritizing high-performance ad formats like rewarded video ads and playable ads, which tend to see higher CPMs, fill rates and ultimately media dollars from advertisers. Moves like this won’t save the commercial coffers of app publishers from ATT but it will buy them more time to figure it out. 

“We’re assuming a 9 to 12% revenue dip off the back of 15% of our bid requests having the IDFA but we’ve split down the middle in terms of our users being on iOS and Android devices,” said the chief revenue officer at a mobile app developer on condition of anonymity. “So we’re not losing revenue on the user entirely — it’s cut in half. We also have users to model out because we’ve already seen 30% of our bid requests without the IDFA as a result of people using Limit Ad Tracking. It’s not like we haven’t seen this big tectonic shift before.”

If all else fails it seems like some marketers seem content to pause, pull or reallocate spending money intended for iOS campaigns. Some app advertisers are already pulling dollars — albeit a small portion — away from iOS currently and pouring it into Android according to the six mobile ad execs interviewed for this article. 

“The brand guys are not ready and their dollars are going to go all over the place as everything from frequency capping to retargeting gets broken,” said Kunal Nagpal, general manager of publisher platforms and exchange at ad tech vendor InMobi. “There’s this belief among marketers that there are enough screens, whether its mobile web, desktop or CTV, that they can just divert the money. That’s a short-term solution.”

However, just because consumers were investing in their living spaces did not mean that home furnishings retailers could sit back and relax. The influx of consumers also brought a whole host of new competition. If companies were not prepared to differentiate themselves, they risked being left behind. 

The Company Store responded: Its marketing team made sure, throughout 2020, that it was communicating its differentiators along every step of the buying journey. 

Finding new customers in a pandemic

As a 110-year-old business with a rich heritage, The Company Store was no stranger to driving customers online. That said, the pandemic did bring a host of new online audiences, many of whom had never before purchased at-home items, such as bedding, online. 

The first tactic The Company Store used to find new customers was ensuring its teams had the right online prospecting tactics in place. Identifying and targeting high-value customers, and serving them highly relevant ads, was a key strategy. 

“Any retailer nowadays needs to target, optimize, change and try, try again,” said Corinne Bentzen, CEO of The Company Store. “Criteo has been a key partner in similar audience targeting, and more recently, we have seen success with commerce audiences, which is specifically going after high-value prospective customers and serving relevant products, which is driving above-average AOV.”

The Company Store also rebranded its website in March 2020. While the brand always planned to spend the year making its site better, the influx of online shoppers made it even more important to improve browsing capabilities and increase meaningful content. 

“The pandemic only accelerated us — making our site better, making it easier to shop, showing products in an easy-to-browse way and giving consumers a breadth of content to interact with once they were interested in a specific product,” said Bentzen.

How the company kept consumers coming back

While pure-play e-commerce retailers have seen many benefits emerge from the model over the last year, the rise in vaccinations in the U.S. is allowing consumers to feel more confident re-emerging into society. In many cases, this also means a return to in-store shopping. 

The Company Store is not worried about consumers heading back to its brick-and-mortar competitors, though. Beyond the company’s site’s ease of use, it has also worked on critical differentiators, like its return policy. 

“We have our ‘Rest Easy Guarantee’ where you can test your product, use it, wash it and after 90 days, if you don’t like it, you can still return it and we will credit you back for that purchase,” said Bentzen. Since launching the policy, Bentzen noted that returns have decreased.

And The Company Store paid attention to the customer experience and tone of its messaging overall, especially in the challenging times of 2020.

“We have a lot of prints, we have a lot more color, and we know this was hugely relevant in a time that was a little grim,” says Bentzen. “We did beef up on a little bit of humor, a little bit of whimsy. We didn’t take ourselves too seriously in a world that was obviously very, very serious.”

Planning for 2021 and beyond

It is clear that even as more consumers head back into stores, e-commerce will remain a huge part of the buying experience and become increasingly competitive. 

To increase customer lifetime value and loyalty in a world where shoppers are online more than ever, retailers need to think beyond big discounts to keep consumers coming back. An easy-to-use website, an extensive return policy and superior customer service are just a few of The Company Store’s success stories. 

Another differentiator that keeps customers coming back? Focusing on the issues that are important to them, such as sustainability. 

“We are looking for solutions where we can communicate without creating waste,” said Bentzen. “One example is using the inside flaps of our shipping boxes for messages as opposed to adding insert cards. Also, I am allergic to a box in a box.”

Finally, it is all about making sure the home feels like a haven. 

“One of the big questions we have out there is if consumers are going to continue investing in the home,” said Bentzen. “While I think many of us are getting antsy and want to get out and about, I think our relationship with the home has changed. It has become our safe haven. Our goal at The Company Store is to continue to make it that safe haven.”