Month: May 2021

Key Details:

• U.S. Shopify merchants who enable “Buy on Google,” Google’s native checkout flow, will be able to provide Shop Pay as a checkout option.
• When customers use Shop Pay via Google, their checkout data, such as credit card information, billing information and address, will be shared with Google, according to a spokesperson from Shopify.
• Google separately announced that it will soon open up integrations with retailers using WooCommerce, GoDaddy, and Square.
• Shop Pay handled 137 million orders in 2020

When a customer finds a product on Google, they will be shown several purchasing options offered by the seller. This could be buying the product on the retailer’s site, picking up the item at a nearby store or choosing Google’s native checkout flow. In Google’s native checkout, customers have the option of paying with a saved credit card, PayPal account and, if a Shopify merchant is involved, Shop Pay.

Integrations = Data

Google also announced yesterday that it will soon open up integrations with retailers using WooCommerce, GoDaddy, and Square. These partnerships, along with Shopfiy, will give Google huge insight on what consumers are buying.

Google is often where consumers go to compare products or find a retailer’s direct website. But allowing retailers to sell for free, and adding more payment options, makes Google itself more of a shopping tool. And making seamless checkout available renders it more appealing, and may lead shoppers to complete their purchase within the Google search frame.

Looking East

Google has long tried to play a bigger part in the growing e-commerce market. It succeeded in attracting more sellers by making it free for them on Google, and eliminating commission fees. The tech behemoth claims to have seen an 80% increase in merchants on the platform since then, according to Google’s first quarter 2021 earnings. There was also a 74% year-over-year growth in the number of products listed on Google and consumer searches more than tripled compared to the previous year. The company also says that over 1 billion shopping sessions are happening every day on the platform.

But the integration with Shopify means that Google is looking to capture more of the mobile and general e-commerce market. It seems to take a page from how mobile commerce is conducted in China, where mobile shopping is a snap because most shopping apps already have the customer’s payment info stored, making for a very frictionless checkout.

According to a blog post from May 2020, Shopify claims that over 40 million buyers use Shop Pay to regularly buy from Shopify stores. The company also says that Shop Pay, which launched in 2017, results in a conversion rate that is 1.72x higher than a typical checkout flow, and is 70% faster. 

Shop Pay handled 137 million orders in 2020, resulting in nearly $20 billion in gross merchandise value since it started in 2017, according to a release by Shopify earlier this year.

In February, Shop Pay also integrated with Facebook and Instagram Shops.

Researchers from the Business School at City University of London, and Goldsmiths, University of London, visited 36 different venues in London, including coffee houses, pubs, hotel bars, churches, museums, libraries and train stations to conduct in-depth interviews with customers who regularly work from such spaces. 

Workers experienced better productivity and greater motivation than home working, with third spaces offering the health and well-being benefits of socializing and mitigate isolation the interviews revealed. They also felt a sense of belonging that can’t always be achieved from home working, the researchers observed. 

A rise in demand for working from third spaces is on the cards and companies rolling out their hybrid work set-ups should be prepared to embrace this, as should hospitality businesses, according to lead researcher Dr Laetitia Mimoun.

“It might take time for companies to get used to this, but they can ignore it and hope that people stay at home, or they can embrace it, and even encourage employees who live in the same area to work in the same coffee shop to create that team dimension,” she said.

For Ellen Cole, who runs her own social media, PR and marketing consultancy from York in the U.K., working from cafes, libraries and hotels helps reduce loneliness. “Simply having someone to talk to and hearing background noise has really helped me with work,” she said.

The research also resonates with Jeff Melnyk, founding partner at growth strategists Within People, who launched the business eight years ago with a “no office” principle. His globally distributed team has regularly worked from restaurants, coffee shops and bars. 

San Francisco-based Melnyk is also working on a new book and likes to write from a busy, noisy environment like a hotel bar. He even once had a Zoom meeting with two agency founders from the viewing platform at the top of London’s Tate Modern gallery. 

That had more impact than booking a meeting room at a co-working space, he said, which he thinks are essentially just offices anyway. “Not everyone has an optimum space at home to work — with distractions, family to care for, or just the wrong energy. Our environment plays a critical role in getting us into flow. There are certain creative tasks that I just can’t do from home,” he added.

Likewise, Sarah Hawley, CEO and founder of remote jobs website Growmotely, has worked remotely since 2014, and likes to work outside of the house two days a week, often from her favourite cafe in Austin, Texas. She predicts a rise in hybrid spaces: cafes built out more like co-working spaces, and hotels with integrated work spaces. 

“Different people thrive in different working environments, and also feel energized by changing their scenery. Some of us, on some days, need a quiet, focused space, like home. A cafe can provide a hybrid environment where one gets to absorb the energy of the people bustling around, without needing to engage one-on-one,” said Hawley.

Naturally, it’s not for everyone. David Robinson, managing director at Scottish digital agency Red Evolution, said he and his remote team members favour co-working spaces over cafes, pubs and the like, believing them to be noisy, distracting and ultimately, not set up for work.

“Cafe owners are running businesses, not a creche for workers — it’s rude to take space and power and assume a flat white every two hours justifies it,” he said. 

“If you need the bathroom, let’s hope your MacBook is still there when you get back. And if you need to Zoom, I’m sure the client doesn’t mind the clank of cups and loud chatter in the background.”

According Pronghorn research, while Black Americans represent 12% of alcohol consumers across categories, they make up just 7.8% of the sector’s labor force and 2% of executives in the industry. In working with Diageo, Simms and Harris aim to change that by bringing in and promoting Black talent as well as finding and encouraging Black brand founders with capital investment, said Simms, co-founder of Pronghorn and CEO of Lobos 1707, an independent tequila and mezcal spirits brand. 

“When we look at the last 21 years we can’t find one meaningful exit [i.e. nothing over $20 million] of a Black-owned spirits brand to a major supplier,” said Harris, who spent nearly 15 years of her career working alongside Sean “Diddy” Combs, brand ambassador and partner of Diageo-owned Ciroc via Combs Enterprises. “We plan to change that.” 

So far, Pronghorn has already identified 100 Black-owned brands to potentially work with and help grow; Pronghorn did not name any specific brands already identified. The initiative, which is named for the North American mammal of the same name known its speed over long distances, is hoping to find as well as encourage more Black owned-and-operated brands.

“We know spirits and we know the Black community so we can start there,” said Simms. “Our more audacious ambition is to build a model that can be templated to other audiences, constituencies, industries.” 

The focus of Pronghorn will be on entrepreneurship and job creation over the next decade as it takes time and long-term commitment to truly make change within an industry, said Simms and Harris. As for advertising, “we will 100% be engaged in impacting the narrative in terms of the appropriate amount of ad dollars directed” to Black-owned brands, noted Simms, who declined to discuss specific advertising dollar amounts.

“Diversity is good for business,” said Harris, co-founder of Pronghorn and chief marketing officer of Lobos 1707. “Brands need to understand that you need to really look and feel like the people you serve. How can we ensure as a brand that we are showing up for the community in the right way? It doesn’t matter if it’s spirits, beverages, consumer goods, etc. we really want to engage with the consumer and speak their language across the ecosystem.”  

Focusing on a business case makes sense to Derek Walker, founder of Brown and Browner, who added that the success of a brand like Uncle Nearest should have other companies looking to work with Black founders. “It makes good business sense to do it,” said Walker. “We have got to start connecting the power of being more inclusive and more diverse to profits. They’re making a business argument for it.”

While Harris and Simms would like to create a model to diversify an industry that can in the future be used beyond spirits, “there’s so much room and such a huge gap in great, quality brands coming to the marketplace owned by Black founders and run by Black executives that our main focus will be on that,” said Harris.

“We’ll be using these [Privacy Sandbox] APIs for our own ads and measurement products just like everyone else, and we will not build any backdoors for ourselves,” said Dischler. 

However, Google’s promise doesn’t address the elephant in the room: The company may not be opening a proverbial backdoor for itself, but it still owns the house. After third-party cookies stop working in its Chrome browser, Google has said it will allow itself to glean and use individual-level data from its owned-and-operated properties. But it has not said whether or not Chrome is considered an owned-and-operated property.

“The issue is not so much defining it as a backdoor,” said Amanda Martin, vp of enterprise partnerships at digital agency Goodway Group. “It’s defining what they consider owned-and-operated and their first-party data, and what [advertisers] consider owned-and operated and their first-party data,” she added. “Google’s ecosystem gets really gray because of all the pieces they own.”

Besides, Google could change its mind down the road, said digital ad consultant Ty Martin, founder of digital ad firm Ad Bacon. “Google is under continual pressure to drive better and better results, and those improvements have to come from somewhere. At some point in the future, in order to drive that growth that’s required, they may have to revisit areas of opportunity that up until now have been considered off-limits.”

Dischler, during the event, also reaffirmed Google’s stance against identity tech used for tracking individual people for ad targeting and measurement. “Third-party cookies and other proposed identifiers that some in the industry are advocating for do not meet the rising expectations consumers have when it comes to privacy. They will not stand up to rapidly evolving regulatory restrictions; they simply cannot be relied on in the long term,” he said.

The publisher used that popularity to its advantage, working with brands on dozens of content deals to reach its nearly 17 million followers across its main brand pages.

“I do see us as the publisher who took the platform the most seriously and invested the most time and energy in building audiences there and now we’re reaping the benefits,” said Wesley Bonner, vp marketing and business development, BDG.

Near its one-year anniversary of launching its brand channels across TikTok, Bonner shared more about the company’s strategy at a Digiday U event on May 12 that explored how brands found enough success in experimental channels to make it part of their permanent strategies.

BDG’s Mission: Learn TikTok and communicate findings to brands

Brands approached BDG with a slew of questions about TikTok. It served as a light bulb moment for BDG, which prides itself on being on top of publishing trends. BDG leaders realized they weren’t “quite comfortable answering their questions,” Bonner said.

It started a new partnership between BDG and TikTok. “Publishers are usually a resource for brands for platforms and we want[ed] to be a resource for brands on TikTok,” Bonner said.

“TikTok was always on our radar,” Bonner said, pointing to the success creators and other brands had on the platform. The trouble came down to finding the right way to communicate (and reach) audiences there — both from a publisher perspective and as a way for its advertisers to reach audiences.

It did take “bravery” for BDG to take an initial interest in the platform, noted Robbie Levin, manager media partnerships, TikTok, who appeared at the event in conversation with Bonner. Levin said publishers should give it a few months to a year to find their audiences on the platform and credited over 1,000 publisher accounts with seeing the opportunity.

“When we talk to publishers about the platform, we try to make sure that they know first and foremost that there’s a place for them and their communities on TikTok. Bustle’s success is indicative of this,” Levin said.

Levin pointed to BDG finding niche fans within specific communities on TikTok, from its science-focused channel with its brand Inverse to parent-focused channel with its brand Romper.

“We encourage publishers to seek out their fans on TIkTok as well as their future fans and they can do that by really understanding the platform,” Levin said. “We like to think our platform provides them the creative tools to do that.”

TikTok’s team of “growth strategists” will work with publishers when they first join the platform to provide support, from technical to troubleshooting, to help assist in that publisher’s foray into TikTok.

BDG relied on engagement on the platform to inform its strategy. “Engagement really is the feedback loop,” Bonner said. “They like it or they don’t.”

Unlike other social platforms, though, in which you can analyze engagement to determine how it performed in as soon as 30 minutes, TikTok videos can sometimes go viral months after they’re posted. “It really is a long-term game in terms of the content engagement,” Bonner said.

It’s led the publisher to think differently about the themes audiences want to see on TikTok and has shaped how the company approaches video shoots. The team walks away, say, from a celebrity interview with a piece of video specifically for TikTok.

The TikTok strategy also meant a lot of experimentation for BDG — and listening to creators — which Bonner described as a “great way to tiptoe into the platform.” If a publisher doesn’t work with the creator outright for in-feed content, it could still serve as a good opportunity to consult with them and hear their expertise on how to use the channel.

“Creators are the most experienced people in using the platform on a day-to-day basis,” Bonner said, adding that BDG works with a team of creators who advise the company’s TikTok strategy — from the technical standpoint of making videos to finding trends on the platform’s algorithm.

“That way it feels very native to the platform and feels very comfortable with your brand,” Bonner said.

BDG meets monthly with its TikTok creator team to brainstorm around key tentpole events, like New York Fashion Week — which led to pieces like “what I would’ve worn” at the fashion show or a video summarizing an editor’s favorite moments from the (virtual) event.

For publishers that might be intimidated by getting on the platform, Bonner said it’s important for them to find their niche. BDG’s nine brands, as an example, span coverage areas from entertainment to beauty to science, themes that are translated into their respective TikTok channels.

“The followers can really understand the identity and what they’re going to get from your page from a follow or an engagement,” Bonner said. Another piece of advice for publishers: be consistent.

“It is a little daunting to take on the project, but at the same time, working out a plan that really allows you to consistently create content in a way that is either affordable for you or comfortable for you and doubling down on trying as many things as possible,” Bonner said.

Trends move quickly on TikTok so branded content opportunities might want to prioritize having “an evergreen quality” that should be connected to “the ethos of the brand,” Levin said. He suggested that publishers pull together an editorial calendar in terms of the type of content they plan on rolling out across feeds.

“Really think more about what makes your channel unique — not about what’s trending on TikTok at that moment,” Levin suggested.

BDG has used its branded content for educational purposes or is service-oriented. For example, the publisher could work with a brand like Sephora on tutorial videos where a creator showed how to make a smoky eye.

There are a any number of communities on the platform, Bonner said. It’s not all viral dancing videos, in other words.

“Spend a little time with the platform as a user,” Bonner said. “A year ago I thought, ‘we’re not going to be dancing’ so therefore I don’t know if we have a fit and that was such a naive way of thinking.”

TikTok is looking to scale up and further connect with its network of publishers, with resources that have so far included a weekly newsletter and a creator portal full of best practices and content strategies.

“We want to make sure we have events and workshops and panels so [publishers are] getting to know us and becoming familiar with what we have to offer,” Levin said.

Both from an organic and paid perspective, Levin said the visual app lends itself to entertain viewers. “It’s really important that they see something that’s intriguing or visually stunning,” he added.

Publishers can also use their TikTok feeds to inform coverage elsewhere. BDG, for example, profiled popular TikTok star Addison Rae. “TikTok is a microcosm of culture. You see trends or creators growing on TikTok and that’s an indicator of interest on other platforms or culture in general,” Levin said.