While total projected fraud losses have gone down year over year, there is still anywhere from $6.5 billion to $16.4 billion globally — estimates vary widely — that will be lost to ad fraud in 2017.
And that’s just fraud. Viewability represents further wasted ad dollars when real people may view a page that hosts an ad, but not actually see the full ad.
Marc Pritchard, CEO of P&G believes there is “at least 20 to 30 percent of waste in the media supply chain because of lack of viewability, nontransparent contracts, nontransparent measurement of inputs, fraud and now even ads showing up in unsafe places.”
In this eBook, we assess the current state of ad fraud, and share a few best practices to help advertisers avoid losing precious advertising dollars to deceptive practices.
Competition among consumer packaged goods (CPG) brands is daunting; the industry is estimated at $2 trillion and most segments are highly saturated. In fact, an estimated 56% of U.S. consumers said the number of brands they consider for a given product or service has increased significantly over the past 10 years. It makes sense, then, that when brand affinity is not a factor, consumers will often make purchases based on price alone.
In a crowded marketplace, consumers often feel as if they are comparing apples to apples—but the right marketing tools can help your brand stand out | Image courtesy Unsplash user Raquel Martinez
When markets are mature and saturated, it can be difficult for your brand to gain greater market share. Loyal customers want to stay with the brands they’ve already chosen. Cost-conscious consumers want the lowest price. Among all this competition, how can your brand hope to gain market share from its competitors? The answer is in leveraging digital marketing partnerships to reach new customers and build brand awareness.
The significant growth of the CPG marketplace over the past decade means that mass advertising and shelf placement are no longer sufficient to excite shoppers and convert them into customers. CPG brands often turn to coupons to entice and grow their customer base, but in the modern age of digital shoppers who are looking to deeply connect with a brand for more than just its price point, these steep discounts often result in nothing more than a one-time purchase—at a loss.
If your CPG brand wants to remain competitive in the new world of digital marketing, you need an alternative to the expensive discount programs of the past. This alternative can be found in mobile apps that drive consumers toward your brand as they shop. When consumers receive brand messages in real time while they are in a retail location, the sales funnel becomes short and effective, allowing your brand to naturally convert awareness into a purchase.
How Your Brand Can Leverage New Technology to Improve Market Share
In a study involving a diverse group of consumers, eMarketer noted that 73% of consumers cite price and value as top sales drivers. This hasn’t changed much in the history of selling CPG products. What has changed is how brands make consumers aware of their value and quality. Brands have to be able to gain the attention of consumers—and the digital space is the place where they must do it.
62% of millennials, one of the largest groups of consumers, use digital services to locate products. To gain the attention of these shoppers, your brand needs to shift its focus to the digital world, particularly mobile apps that travel with shoppers. The top benefits of mobile apps for CPG brands trying to determine how to gain market share from competitors are:
GPS technology accompanies consumers on their shopping trips: Given permission, smartphone GPS technology allows companies to follow consumers throughout their day, offering mobile deals when they’re most likely to buy—and close to a store entrance. Those quick trips to the store can be used to remind consumers of a particular brand, ensuring it is at the forefront of their mind while they’re about to make a purchase.
Online rapport with customers:81% of consumers research products online before making a significant purchase—and that number continues to grow. With reviews, comparisons, and the like available at their fingertips, savvy shoppers are becoming increasingly likely to turn to the internet before a purchase. That means that you may be able to take market share from CPG companies that are without a digital presence simply by having one yourself.
As we review the statistics above, it becomes clear that a digital presence is crucial for any CPG brand competing in today’s retail market and attempting to gain market share over their competitors. However, developing an online presence requires time and significant investment, even for well-known brands like Band-Aid or Kleenex, names synonymous with a particular product. 2 million blogs, according to Hosting Facts, are published every day, with countless brands all trying to create an online presence.
Brand awareness is a major component of gaining market share. That’s no secret. But gaining that brand awareness requires the ability to stand out on digital platforms, which are often saturated with other brands attempting to do the exact same thing. To gain an edge in a highly competitive market, your CPG brand can’t start at square one. Instead, you need to find a way to use strategic partnerships to gain notoriety in the digital space.
Building Partnerships with Popular Shopping Apps
Apps are ushering in a new era of retail marketing, helping brands emerge as leaders in a crowded marketplace | Image courtesy toddwmac
Instead of a high-cost, full-scale online marketing campaign, many brands are finding ways to work their way further down the sales funnel, reaching out to consumers where and as they shop. By leveraging the ease and flexibility of existing mobile retail apps, CPG companies can incentivize consumers without damaging their bottom line. Partnering with popular app offerings which have an established foothold in the retail market offers brands the opportunity to build product awareness and consumer trust which, in the end, leads to a greater share of their target market.
How is this accomplished? Consumers want to feel like fiscally savvy shoppers. However, CPG brands, often operating on slim profitability margins, can hardly afford to slash prices to make a sale, especially since this can lead to long-term devaluations of their brand name. After all, greater market share and customer loyalty don’t necessarily equate to profitability. Shopping apps that aggregate rewards from partner brands benefit both the consumer and the brand in three ways:
They can help reduce overhead associated with a full-scale digital marketing campaign: A full-scale digital marketing campaign is not a cheap endeavor. However, by working with an established app as a part of their entire marketing campaign, brands are able to reduce some overhead costs.
They target motivated consumers: Shopping apps don’t target the general population. Instead, they target consumers who are interested in learning more about products. When consumers download these apps, they want the app to contact them about the brands they partner with. Rather than simply advertising at consumers, these apps interact with consumers. That interaction leads to brand affinity and ultimately larger market share down the road by creating a value exchange between the brand and the shopper.
They offer an existing audience base: One of the biggest challenges in app marketing is gaining adoption. This is particularly challenging for CPG brands as consumers are very unlikely to download an entire app focused on one single product. This is why established shopping apps are ideal for CPG brands: they offer a built-in audience.
CPG brands spend roughly $225 billion on marketing each year, with discounts that cut into margins. Brand managers are beginning to approach marketing in a new way, however. App-based advertising programs are becoming a highly profitable addition to digital marketing strategies as they draw in consumers without requiring companies to compete at a loss.
Brand awareness breeds greater market share. Partnering with the right shopping apps can significantly increase awareness of your brand, allowing you to claim a greater share of your market segment from your non-digital competitors. By leveraging strategic partnerships with popular mobile shopping apps, your CPG brand is given access to an active user base in the digital space—and all without the risk and high cost of a stand-alone digital program.
Mobile apps have ushered in a new wave of advertising. In addition to building brand awareness through traditional methods, such as television or print, brands are focusing on more genuine connections with consumers in way that makes sense for them. Mobile apps offer that opportunity. Print and television ads are simply unable to travel with consumers as they go about their day-to-day tasks. Innovative retail mobile apps, then, have become a second driving force behind many modern brands gaining market share at brick and mortar locations through increased brand awareness.
It’s far too easy for product label branding to get lost on crowded shelves | Image courtesy Pixabay user kc0uvb
Marketing was traditionally, as a rule, one-sided. Brands reached out to customers without a way for customers to directly respond. The internet made marketing a two-way street, allowing for interaction and communication. Mobile advertising via retail and shopping smartphone apps has personalized this process even further and made the engagement between consumers and brands more immediate.
Let’s explore how CPG brands, in particular, can take advantage of this consumer-focused technology. By leveraging third-party apps with their own established, loyal users, it is possible for your brand to successfully target and achieve product awareness goals—and in a way that naturally increases market share.
Why CPG Brands Must Use Mobile to Drive Brand Awareness
Since the development of the internet, it has become much easier for consumers to reach out to and interact with brands. This creates a closer, more personal relationship, something that your brand can leverage to gain loyal customers as well as grab the attention of new consumers—provided you capitalize on what third-party retail mobile apps have to offer.
Rather than advertise at consumers, you must engage them. In that sense, mobile is the perfect platform as it demonstrates your brand is:
Innovative: Innovation is a big draw for today’s consumers. In one study, 39% of individuals reported that when companies don’t have a mobile presence, they not only view those companies as “outdated” but also as “undesirable.”
Interactive: About 44% of consumers want brand communication to be a two-way street. Digital advertising gives consumers an opportunity for a back and forth dialog with their favored brands. CPG companies should offer consumers avenues to contact them both through basic website marketing and through the rapidly growing mobile retail app marketplace.
Consumer-focused: Consumers are sick of being advertised to. This is evident in the numbers as 38% of consumers want brands to focus on their buyers more, rather than putting all the effort into spreading the brand’s message.
Mobile marketing allows your brand to craft an organic personality. It humanizes your brand by allowing it to dynamically respond to consumers, target your marketing to a specific audience, and reach out at the right times and in the right places. Of course, it’s not as simple as creating an app for your brand; developing a mobile advertising platform is a major challenge that very few companies are ready to undertake.
The Most Significant Challenge for Brands Creating a Mobile Advertising Platform
The biggest hurdle with any mobile advertising platform is adoption; there’s a significant amount of competition for new apps. If you look at the numbers, you’ll see there are 2.8 million apps available through Google Play and another 2.2 million apps available through the App Store. Those numbers can make it next to impossible for any one brand to stand out among the competition. However, adoption is the key component to gaining brand awareness via mobile advertising. Unless your app is used, it cannot drive awareness.
Unlike television and print marketing campaigns, mobile advertising is dependent on the permissive use of your target audience. That means that consumers must seek out the apps related to your product and add them to their device. When you note the average consumer has 21 apps on their phone, but only regularly uses one or two of them, you quickly realize why adoption can prove challenging. However, there is a solution—and one that is friendly for CPG brands marketing budgets.
Innovative Retail Mobile Apps: The Solution to Adoption Challenges
When focused on gaining the attention of your desired market in a highly competitive app store, you are competing against an infinite number of brands for the attention of a finite audience. The ideal solution to this problem is often to eschew creating a standalone app and, instead, leverage a partnership with a company that already has an established following of your potential consumers.
While brands may have the people power necessary to create mobile advertising programs in-house, or a platform to work with, newly created apps do not come with a built-in audience. However, by partnering with an established app, your brand can gain a competitive edge in gaining brand awareness and growing market share via your mobile advertising strategies.
Specifically, innovative third-party retail mobile apps that focus on rewards programs offer:
Ready-made audiences: Third-party apps draw more users than brand or retail-specific apps across many audience segments and markets thanks to their ability to align with multiple brands and retailers. CPG brands that align with a third-party app, then, are given the opportunity to introduce their products to a receptive, ready-made audience.
Flexible rewards programs: Digital rewards programs can be particularly useful for CPG brands as they allow users to collect and gain rewards for buying specific products regardless of the retailer. This eliminates the need for CPG companies to be dependent on a specific retail chain.
Consistent profit margins: By offering rewards instead of discounts to motivate purchase, discounted prices from coupon codes don’t cut into the already tight profit margins of many CPG brands.
Retail mobile advertising is a proven marketing strategy for CPG brands that want to gain the recognition, and business, of a growing, tech-savvy audience. However, the best approach to this strategy, retail shopping apps, is a saturated market. To ensure success—and to optimize your marketing budget—your brand must align with a program that offers an existing, loyal audience.
Consumers trust the apps they give valuable smartphone space to—and your brand can leverage the credibility of the most popular shopping apps. By partnering with platforms specifically designed to appeal to consumers, and right in the moment when they’re ready to make a purchase, your brand can naturally increase not only product awareness, but market share.
There’s nothing more valuable than a loyal user – but finding these consumers on mobile can be a huge challenge for many brands and retailers. At Button’s Tap Conference in New York City, CEO Bill Demas spoke on a panel about how loyalty programs like Shopkick can be one of the best channels to acquire mobile customers that spend more, frequently. Shared at the conference, here are 4 strategies to drive loyalty and results for brands and retailers.
Leverage location-based technology to drive timely physical conversions
Location intelligence and data are key for bridging the online-offline gap. When done right, location-based technology can be incredibly powerful for connecting brands and retailers with shoppers with demonstrated purchase intent. Yet most companies don’t have access to first-party offline location data and instead must rely on third-party bid stream data. Less than 1% of the location data from ad exchanges is accurate enough to help marketers understand people’s movements in the real world. Even then, the most high-quality data doesn’t actually tie to store visits.
At Shopkick, we leverage a combination of geofencing/GPS, beacon/BLE and other technology to verify when a shopper enters the store with a high degree of accuracy. We are also able to detect visits to the dressing room, or interactions with a product at shelf. This new level of precision can help brands avoid costly and opaque traditional marketing tactics, like endcap placements.
Change consumer behavior with incentives
Rewards and incentives play a huge role in the purchase journey and most consumers now expect some form of value-exchange for their purchases. As a result, discounts, rebates, promotions and loyalty points are central to most brands’ and retailers’ marketing strategies. However, because they have become so ubiquitous, these tactics are less motivating and often end up hurting profit margins and brand equity just to drive the short-term sale.
The Shopkick ecosystem is entirely fueled by kicks, or points, that reward desired shopping behaviors. However instead of just being rewarded for the purchase, users earn kicks for engagements throughout their journey, like browsing content and online offers, watching videos, inviting friends, walking into stores, engaging with products online and at the shelf, and making on- and offline purchases. We know this incentive model is capable of changing consumer behavior: take Lily, a Shopkick user in Houston who recently told us, “If I need to go grocery shopping and Walmart has more kicks, I’ll go there.” Offering kicks can drive the same behaviors as discounts or rebates, but cost much less for the brand or retailer.
Incorporate gamification tactics to drive re-engagement and retention
Incorporating gamification tactics into loyalty strategies can be a great way to both engage consumers to keep them active and retained, and re-engage lapsed buyers. Conventional gaming tactics like planning workflows, completing projects and levelling up makes earning rewards feel more like a game. When shoppers accomplish their goals, like reach their next reward threshold, there’s a great sense of satisfaction and accomplishment.
Another way to drive re-engagement and retention is reward them often. With Shopkick’s entry into mobile shopping, we’re now rewarding for mobile browsing and buying too, and with grocery, we’re able to keep in frequent touch, making even mundane errands a treat. Every engagement, every behavior, every purchase provides a chance to acknowledge their loyalty: beginning at the moment of consideration vs. just at the point of purchase – and continues with them along their journey.
For example we’ll message our users about upcoming milestones based on their specific behavior. If a user is saving kicks for a Starbucks gift card, we’ll alert her to reward-earning opportunities to help her achieve that Pumpkin Spice Latte. By delivering these moment of joy and fun, we’re able to drive increased brand equity, engagements and purchases.
Strategically partner with companies that elevate the user experience
In selecting partners, businesses must never lose sight of the consumer experience. At Shopkick, we have invested heavily in understanding our core customer, primarily moms who take on the heavy lifting of household shopping but also like to treat themselves. Our approach to strategic partners is always through the lens of how we can elevate the user experience. We want to match the best brands and retailers to our users and ensure our shoppers have a consistently valuable experience, from content on the platform to browsing offers to scanning products to making purchases to redeeming rewards.
As we continue to grow our product offerings, we focus on what our users want and pay close attention to their feedback. What we heard loud and clear is that our users want to be able to seamlessly shop across channels, and that primarily means shopping on mobile. We partnered with Button to be able to integrate with the mobile shopping companies that our users frequently buy, like eBay, Groupon, Boxed and Jet.com. Users are now rewarded for browsing and buying on mobile and after only 2 months, we’ve seen extraordinary results. We’re excited to expand to new verticals like travel, ticketing marketplaces, and alcohol delivery.
In the pre-digital era, the relationship between brick-and-mortar retail stores and their customers was largely transactional— places to fulfill supply and demand. Yet as online commerce continues to grow exponentially, the role of the retail store is shifting from purely pragmatic to more experiential. Moving forward, the key to survival for retail stores may rely on their ability to act as a living showcase for products and brands.
Take Coach, for instance, which has made some radical yet effective changes in its approach. Last year, the company pulled its line of handbags and accessories out of 25% of its North American department store locations — choosing instead to focus energies on its own stores. Chief among those stores is the new Coach flagship location in New York, which elevates the ordinary shopping experience with special touches like a monogramming station (replete with emojis), a 12-foot dinosaur fashioned out of Coach leather pieces, and Made to Order Rogue (which gives shoppers the ability to create a bespoke Rogue bag).
Tesla and Nike are also among the companies leading the charge to create new associations with the traditional retail experience. For luxury car manufacturer Tesla, the dealership concept has made way for direct-to-consumer stores and galleries. Sleek interactive displays and on-site demos educate shoppers about the brand’s electric vehicles, while design studios enable would-be Tesla owners to configure their desired model (which they can then share on social media). As Automotive News put it, “The idea is less to sell a product on the spot than to let shoppers spend time with the brand.” It seems to be working: Reservations for Tesla’s Model 3 are reported at around 400,000.
As for Nike, its new concept store in Soho adopts an omnichannel-style approach to marry the company’s virtual and physical offerings. The goal? To offer dynamic tools for personalized performance. Among the in-store features: an instant personalization studio with laser engraving and custom printing capabilities and a fitting room with digital checkout and adaptive lighting (to mimic the feel of a yoga studio or evening run). Numerous “trial zones” offer inviting spaces for shoppers to test shoes, whether on a synthetic turf soccer field or on a basketball half court. For instance, the Nike+ Running Trial Zone transforms the treadmill into a 90-second run in Central Park or the West Side Highway via digital screen (fueled by real-time performance feedback).
The Shifting Role Of Stores
This new breed of experiential retail signals the movement toward stores as vehicles for marketing rather than just straightforward sales. Though e-commerce provides instant gratification through savvy search engines and easy one-click buying, there is still no replacement for the sensory touchpoint provided by a brick-and-mortar location where customers can touch, feel and evaluate the product in person. Retailers that recognize this distinction will certainly have an edge in the rapidly changing marketplace, in which the number of distressed retailers has tripled since the Great Recession, according to Moody’s Investor Service.
The proof? Highly successful online retailers such as Amazon, Fabletics and Warby Parker have all ventured beyond the digital landscape to open physical stores in recent years. Though it may seem counterintuitive in today’s rocky retail climate, these retailers are finding real value in reaching customers the old-fashioned way. According to Amazon’s Chief Financial Officer Brian Olsavsky, the retailer’s burgeoning chain of bookstores is “another way [for the company] to reach the customer and test what resonates with them.”
No matter how long a retailer has been in the brick-and-mortar game, its longevity will depend on not only its ability to create enhanced experiences for customers but its unique take on how to keep them coming back. One shining example is Nordstrom, which is slated to open 17 new stores this year (amid a landslide of closures for other department stores). The retailer has long been hailed for excellent customer service, from hassle-free returns to hand-delivering items to homes. Whole Foods has also succeeded in this vein, going to great lengths to ensure an inviting environment with colorful displays and carefully-curated playlists.
This “feel-good” takeaway is yet another aspect that is largely exclusive to the real-life shopping realm, and it goes hand-in-hand with shaping the new face of retail. Now is the vital time for retailers to embrace these realizations, as many shoppers still prefer buying from physical stores over shopping online — and forward-thinking, experientially-minded retailers have a shot at keeping it that way.
We are pleased with the traction we’ve seen with our new Mobile Shopping offering since its launch in last month. In just three short weeks, we saw repeat purchase rates close to 20% at two of our leading mcommerce partners, and Shopkick users tapped 8x more than industry benchmarks.
As we continue to grow our product offerings, we focus on what our users want and pay close attention to their feedback. I love receiving emails from our users and read everything that comes to ceo@shopkick.com. One consistent theme has been requests to earn kicks while traveling. Some examples:
“Please add reward travel for Marriott, Hilton and airlines. My parents are getting old and I wanna take them on one last epic trip.”
“Want kicks to travel to a family reunion with the first cousins.”
“I am retired and love to travel. Was a foster parent for teenage girls for 15 years. Now it’s OK to do something for me. Want to use kicks to travel.”
Today, I am happy to announce that Shopkickers can earn kicks at hotels.com, a popular online accommodation booking website with properties all over the world, when booking a stay at one of their huge assortment of hotels. Hotels.com is our first partner in travel with more to be announced shortly.
Now, our users can enjoy earning kicks while they travel! After the trip, they’ll have more kicks waiting to be redeemed for gifts cards at Amazon, American Eagle, Best Buy, eBay, Groupon, Starbucks, TJ Maxx, and our ever-growing list of rewards partners.
Other additions to our mcommerce platform include Minibar and Seatgeek, which mark our entry into the alcohol delivery and ticketing spaces.
Happy Shopkicking and feel free to reach out to me anytime at ceo@shopkick.com. I welcome your feedback!
In this webinar on demand, Moat VP of account management Callie Reynolds joins Shopkick regional VP Jenny Campbell to discuss how advertisers can protect themselves from invalid traffic and viewability issues to focus on the metrics that matter.
It’s critical for marketers to be able to understand the actions that consumers take across their purchase journey that ultimately lead to conversion and sales. However determining these signals in digital and mobile marketplaces fraught with viewability challenges and ad fraud makes this task even more difficult.
Ad fraud is still a major concern for most advertisers, as the environment is complex and potential costs are considerable. Ad measurement firm Moat has found that about half of all digital ads aren’t considered viewable. And according to Forrester Research, US fraudulent or non-viewable ad costs totaled $7.4 billion last year, with that figure projected to rise to $10.9 billion by 2021.
This issue goes well beyond traditional display formats. With the explosive popularity of video ads, how can advertisers be sure that they are being seen (and heard) by the right people?
This webinar on demand with Shopkick and Moat examines the valid digital and mobile signals that lead to both online and offline purchases.
Watch to learn how to:
Navigate the fragmented advertising environment to avoid wasted spend on non-viewable or fraudulent ad buys
Understand the unique ad challenges impacting desktop, mobile web and mobile apps
Incorporate video best practices to capture consumer’s attention and achieve key brand metrics
Detect valid digital and mobile signals that lead to both online and offline purchases
The marketing of alcoholic beverages and products can be extremely complicated. Not only must brands confirm they are marketing to consumers that are of age, but they also have to navigate different state laws and requirements. Today, in the US, each state (and even individual counties within the states) have specific laws regulating the marketing, sale, and shipping of alcohol to its residents.
These laws date back to the period of after the end of Prohibition in 1933, when federal and state laws created a three-tiered system for manufacturing, distribution, and sales of alcohol. First, manufacturing: licensed producers are the only entities who may make wine, beer, and spirits. These licensed producers may then only sell alcohol products to licensed distributors, and then these licensed producers must only sell these products to licensed retailers. After this, licensed retailers may then sell alcoholic products to consumers. This system may seem convoluted today, but at the time, politicians wanted to ensure each portion of the alcohol industry acted entirely independently. This system gave local politicians the ability to grant licenses only to producers, distributors, and sellers they deemed “fit”.
The complicated nature of these various laws can cause many companies to give up and avoid marketing alcohol altogether. However, location-based technology enabled by mobile now solves many of these challenges, and can achieve great results for marketers of alcohol. These solutions can deliver location-specific messages and offers, by targeting consumers who live in the appropriate states and counties that allow consumers to receive incentives for scanning or buying alcohol. To understand how complex this is, let’s look at a couple of examples:
In Pennsylvania, the relevant law states “it shall be unlawful … for any licensee … to offer or give to trade or consumer buyers any prize, premium, gift or other inducement to purchase liquor or malt or brewed beverages […].”
In Georgia, the relevant law states that “no Manufacturer, Producer, Shipper, Importer, Broker, or Wholesaler, nor their employees, agents, Representatives, or anyone acting on their behalf, shall directly or indirectly […] Give or offer to give […] things of value in connection with the sale of Alcoholic Beverages […and…] cooperative advertising and incentive programs shall not be deemed to constitute a [prohibited] partnership agreement.”
At Shopkick, it is our priority to understand these complex and varied laws so we may offer incentives to our consumers based on where they live, what stores they visit, and what type and brand of alcohol they purchase. Shopkick customizes each marketing program to offer incentives, specifically “kicks,” for scans of alcohol in one state and kicks for purchases in another. So, although a consumer may live in a state where we may advertise and offer kicks for scanning an alcoholic product, we may not be able to offer kicks for purchasing an alcoholic product, or vice versa. This specialization allows Shopkick to quickly set up customized marketing campaigns for alcohol (and other products) even in the face of the complex marketing laws.
We work with many wine and spirits manufacturers across the country to navigate these laws, and have seen great results in rewarding consumers for engaging with their brands and products both online and in-stores.
Contact us to learn more about how Shopkick alcohol programs work.
ComScore released its annual US Mobile App Report that charts trends in the mobile app landscape. The report explores the dynamics of mobile media consumption, breaking down app usage and behavior by audience segments, and uncovering other insights to help advertisers and publishers take advantage of these trends.
One of the major takeaways from the report is that apps are dominating consumer’s digital media habits, with 57% of consumers’ time spent using digital media now taking place in mobile apps. Consumers are also fairly established in which apps they use, with most of their time concentrated in their top apps. 90% of mobile app time is spent in consumer’s top five apps, and 50% of time is in their top app.
With consumers’ time being concentrated in a small number of their favorite apps, it’s critical for marketers to understand where their target audience spends time in order to effectively reach and engage them.
While the most popular apps by time spent are predominantly Facebook and Google, a more nuanced look at the top indexing apps by age segment reveals social and entertainment affinity among younger adults, and news and retail affinity among older adults.
Shopkick is reported as one of the top apps for Gen Xers (35-54), the age segment that is most likely to download and use retail and shopping apps.
Shopkick was also identified as one of consumers’ top hidden gems, defined as “the one app that you love, but that you think is not widely known or not used by many people, but think it should be.”
In today’s attention-based economy, marketers must seek out advertising formats that their target audience will engage with and not block or skip. As consumers have become skillfully adept at evading interruptive marketing messages, some advertising formats stand out as particularly effective at capturing consumers attention and driving key brand metrics. Two formats in particular, video and incentive-based rewards, are consistently ranked among the most positive forms of advertising, and viewed most favorably by consumers.
Video is one of the most engaging ways to reach consumers and capture their attention to tell a brand’s story. In fact, the rise of video advertising can be attributed to the fact that short-form video is a true win-win for consumers and marketers. Consumers get branded content that is more dynamic, educational and entertaining while marketers have a greater opportunity to engage, tell their brand or product’s story and build meaningful relationships.
On the Shopkick platform, we’ve found video to be a particularly powerful driver of brand metrics across the purchase journey. While planning their shopping trip or building their list, users can watch a branded video at home or on the go, and be rewarded with kicks, our in-app currency. After viewing, they can save the featured product to their shopping list. Engagement rates for video are much higher than industry standards, as the incentive for viewing drives up Shopkick average completion rates to 94%, compared to industry average of 68% (IAB 2017).
On Shopkick you can connect the viewing of the video to in-store activities like product engagements and purchases. Users are incentivized to visit the product in-store, and are rewarded for picking up the product at shelf. At this point, users who have watched the video are already aware of the product attributes and benefits, and with the product in-hand, we’ve found they are much more likely to purchase. For example 24% of unique scanners watch the brand video and 32% of receipt uploaders watch video.
An example of how video works in the Shopkick platform:
To reach and engage their target audience, marketers must understand the types of content consumers seek and deliver it in the right context to build awareness and ultimately drive sales.Reaching consumers before they get to the store is critical to establish awareness, affinity and get on the shopping list, ultimately increasing likelihood of conversion and purchase.
With 97% of CPG purchases still happening in-stores, it’s critical for marketers to have the right strategies and solutions in place to reach and engage shoppers where they are spending their time and their money.
Shopkick is the most engaging rewards app that bring moments of joy to everyday shopping by offering fun ways to earn rewards. For brands and retailers, Shopkick provides high consumer engagement along the entire path to purchase. Our unique pay for performance model has been proven to deliver high ROI, driving incremental foot traffic, visits to shelf, and sales.
Schedule a meeting with the Shopkick team to to learn more about how our valuable shoppers can help you achieve your shopper marketing goals, or simply visit us at our booth #737 to take the app for a spin and get a free gift card!
The event takes place September 26-28 at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center and is the world’s largest gathering of shopper and retail marketing professionals.
