Want to catch up with what happened in the digital world this week? Our weekly cheat sheet will fill you in on everything you missed while you were scrambling to meet deadlines and put out fires.
Read about eBay allowing brands to target its users, Shazam tagging articles of clothing on TV, Glamour experimenting with Google+ Hangout, Facebook introducing partner categories, and Ribbon launching a payment option on Twitter.
1. eBay opens their doors for ad targeting
Consumer data is a key factor in the success of a business. At a conference in San Francisco this week, eBay announced that they are going to start commercializing their data to different brands to help better reach consumers. Similar to Amazon, retailers who want to target specific shoppers can do so by utilizing the information that eBay has collected on the shopping behavior of all their members. Even if eBay is able to develop strong partnerships from this platform, an obstacle that it may encounter is the user’s concern of having their personal information distributed without their consent.
2. Shazam for clothes
If you have ever wanted a piece of clothing that an actor/actress was wearing on a TV show but struggled to find it, Shazam might be your answer. The company has announced their plans to offer a new fashion app that will allow users to immediately identify clothes worn by people in television programs. While using the app, users can tag a TV segment in order to know more about what the cast is wearing as well as where to purchase the item. Being able to identify a product in a TV show will not only make it easier for consumers to purchase specific items but companies will be able to use this service as a new medium for engagement.
3. Glamour reaches followers through Google+ Hangout
For this entire month, Glamour magazine will be hosting a Google+ Hangout allowing people to submit any questions that they may have via post/video submission. The Hangouts are sponsored by several companies and will feature Glamour staff members, online personalities, as well as many different brand products. The list of sponsors will include L’Oréal Paris, Pantene, Suave, SlimFast, and more. If this experiment proves to be successful, companies will be able to place products in front of millions of Google+ followers while creating a richer interaction between brands and consumers.
4. Facebook launches partner categories for advertisers
Facebook has unveiled partner categories, a new way of targeting ads to a broad range of consumers. Instead of randomly pushing ads to all the users, Facebook looks at the consumer’s shopping and browsing behavior to determine the advertisement that will be displayed. The companies that will be providing the data for the social network are Datalogix, Axciom, and Epsilon. This new ad targeting service will allow Facebook to not only partner with other marketers but to provide them with better user profiles.
5. Ribbon simplifies payments on Twitter
With all the online payment options out there, why not add one more to the list? Similar to Chirpify, Ribbon hopes to provide a payment service that allows users to buy and sell products on Twitter, as well as on other websites. Vendors can embed a link, which is created through Ribbon, along with their promoted product on Twitter that will connect customers to a checkout page where they will input their credit card information to finalize their purchase. In order to compete with other companies like PayPal, Ribbon has lowered their process fee from 5% to 2.9%. Despite the fact that there are several programs like this, it creates an interesting approach for brands to sell and create hype for their products.
