NFR #64 - Paid Social, Durex & WTF

Joining 1,000 readers from companies such as Klaviyo, Shopify, Recharge, Amazon, HubSpot, BrewDog, IBM and Canva.

October 12, 2022

Never Fully Read

Joining 1,000 readers from companies such as Klaviyo, Shopify, Recharge, Amazon, HubSpot, BrewDog, IBM and Canva.

Never Fully Read is a 5-minute marketing newsletter providing you latest events across eCommerce, NFTs, culture & more every Wednesday morning on Linkedin & sub-stack.

Newsletter in a flash:

🤖 eCommerce news:

““Photo Mode allows you to share carousel posts of still images that automatically display one after another. You can add music to soundtrack the images, which viewers can swipe through at their own pace.” Which doesn’t seem to make a heap of sense on TikTok – but then again, maybe it’ll open up new creative options and use cases which will enhance the overall offering of the app.”

“Snapchat is rolling out a new AR experience that lets you try on and purchase Halloween costumes directly within its app, the company announced today. Starting today, Snapchat users can try on and buy costumes of popular movie and TV characters from “Stranger Things,” the “Harry Potter” series, “Squid Game,” “Minecraft,” “Ghostbusters” and more. The new AR experience is launching in partnership with costume company Disguise.”

“Epic Games and Match Group are looking to fortify their antitrust lawsuits against Google by adding new counts to their initial complaint, filed last year, which illustrate the lengths Google supposedly went to in order to dominate the Android app market. The companies on Friday filed a motion to amend their complaints in their cases against Google, which now allege that Google paid off business rivals not to start other app stores that would put them in competition with Google Play. This would be a direct violation of U.S. antitrust law known as the Sherman Act, the amended complaint states.”

“Its reach. The latest to do so is OpenSea, which has launched natively on the layer-1 blockchain, Avalanche, both firms exclusively told TechCrunch. “The future of web3 is multichain; and it’s always been our goal to offer the best selection and connect people with projects and creators across the chains they prefer,” Shiva Rajaraman, VP of product at OpenSea, said to TechCrunch in an email.””

“Elenas estimates that 11 million women in Latin America sell consumer items via catalogs and door-to-door sales methods. It is digitizing that process so they can more easily sell from home. Founder and CEO Zach Oschin started the Colombia-based social commerce company in 2018 (and participated in our Latin American Startup Battlefield that year) to move the traditional independent sales process online. Here’s how it works: Entrepreneurs can browse a portfolio of hundreds of thousands of wholesale products in areas like beauty, personal care, home goods and electronics, decide what they want to sell, how much they want to mark up the price and then promote the products on social channels like WhatsApp and Facebook.”

“Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, confirmed Thursday that hackers made off with at least $100 million, but that the figure could have been significantly more. The Binance blockchain, also known as BNB Chain and Binance Smart Chain, took the rare step of suspending transactions and fund transfers after discovering a vulnerability affecting the BSC Token Hub cross-chain bridge. These bridges are designed to facilitate the transfer of assets from one independent blockchain to another”

📈 Top trends:

Clients include Huel, Wild & Papier

The October report includes the latest paid social trends, learnings and opportunities for eCommerce brands.

Link to read the report here

Headlines include:

  • Brands pile into auctions for reels

  • Audiences respond best to catalogue ads

  • Broad audiences drive cheaper traffic

  • Conversion gap between video & static shrinks

  • Consumers spend more on products that last

  • Brands plan to increase spending on Tik Tok in 2023

Source here

“We surveyed 1,000 online shoppers to uncover how they feel about returns. See what consumers have to say about returns and how they impact their shopping behavior.”

  • 96% of consumers review return policies before making a purchase

  • 54% say they’re unlikely to purchase from an online retailer that doesn’t offer free returns

  • 57% have stopped purchasing from a brand after a bad return experience

Link to report here

”Ecommerce in India is expected to grow at a rate of 25-30% annually for the next five years, with a steady increase in user base that is estimated to beat the second largest ecommerce shopper base - United States - in the next one or two years, according to a report by consultancy firm Bain & Co and homegrown e-tailer Flipkart.”

Mocktails

“Monthly US Google searches, six-month rolling average. Source: Ahrefs

This is not a juice trend; this is an alternative to alcohol. Google searches for “nonalcoholic spirits” in the US are up ~200% since 2019, per Ahrefs.”

🙉 NFT download:

“NFTs have already changed the world. Now it’s time to work through common issues causing the NFT market crash and create more ways to benefit average consumers. As you are most likely aware, there has been a decrease in activity for buying and selling NFTs, causing the NFT market crash. One of the reasons follows the bear market in cryptocurrencies.

However, numerous other factors play a part in the decline. Many go as far as saying NFTs are dead. Although, that’s hard to believe considering a CryptoPunk was recently acquired for $4.5 million, following Tyler Hobbs’ NFT collection selling for $17 million, and a Bored Ape Yacht Club for $1 million.”

Link to article in full here

🏆 WTF moment:

“Procter & Gamble has filed trademark applications for a number of popular and widely used internet acronyms, including LOL and WTF.

The consumer products group, which owns a huge number of brands, ranging from Always to Vicks, has filed applications with the US Patent and Trademark Office to trademark FML (f**k my life), LOL (laughing out loud), NBD (no big deal) and WTF (what the f**k).”

🐤 Twitter thread of the week:

Link to read here

🤝 Hot jobs:

“This role will be key in the evolution and growth of the Vivobarefoot brand. Building our Vivo community is a key strategic goal for the business, and you will be responsible for leading and delivering community engagement and growth across social media, podcasts and other digital community led platforms. You will be in Impact Amplification team working alongside Partnerships and PR, Performance Marketing and Insights teams. You will interact a lot with Impact Brand team and Category marketers. The role will report to the Impact team and VIVOHEALTH team.”

“Nest is a founder-led Performance Marketing Agency set up by former Google and Facebook experts. We specialise in Paid Social performance campaigns & creative development for Ecommerce Advertisers on a global scale, working with some of the most exciting and disruptive brands in this space – Huel, Depop, Ted Baker, Finisterre and Me+Em to name a few. Brands choose Nest for this combined benefit of high-volume performance experience and creative in one coordinated solution. Since launching in 2017, Nest has become one of the fastest-growing independent agencies in the UK and have doubled in size every year.”

“Ranked the number one fastest-growing private company in The Sunday Times 100 2022, AYBL has quickly become one of the most iconic women’s activewear brands worldwide since launching in the UK in 2018. With a mission to unite women through their love for fitness, we are dedicated to providing high quality, affordable activewear which seamlessly combines comfort, confidence and style. From this, our ethos “AYBL to believe, AYBL to achieve” was born.”