NFR #76 - Amazon Buy, Paid Social Trends & Facebook Ads Comeback

Never Fully Read

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

Newsletter in a flash:

🤖 eCommerce news:

• Amazon's Buy with Prime increases shopper conversion by 25% on average

• D’Amelio family’s new footwear line to launch May 2023

• App Store developers have earned $320 billion to date, says Apple

• Instagram is removing the Shop tab, moving Reels from the center spot in design overhaul next month

• Instagram and Facebook introduce more limits on targeting teens with ads

• Microsoft Plans to Integrate ChatGPT into its Bing Search Engine

• Meta Fined $414 Million, Forced to Change its Approach to Ad Personalization in Europe

• How to Take Advantage of Meta’s Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns

📈 Top Trends:

• Nest Commerce Paid Social - Quarterley trends and learnings derived from the Nest Index

• Pickleball popularity exploded last year, with more than 36 million playing the sport

• Black founders still raised just 1% of all VC funds in 2022

👀 Stand out creators:

• Logan Paul & KSI - Launching Prime Hydration & Energy

🐦 Twitter thread of the week:

• Prediction for 2023: Facebook ads are going to make a monuments comeback. Here is how to be prepared

🤝 Hot jobs:

• Endeavor - Consumer Marketing Director, Arts & Entertainment 

• Ted Baker - Marketing Director

• Charlotte Tilbury Beauty - International Marketing Director

🤖 eCommerce news:

📦 Amazon's Buy with Prime increases shopper conversion by 25% on average With shoppers purchasing directly from merchants’ online stores, Buy with Prime allows merchants to build customer relationships and brand loyalty while offering conversion-driving benefits. In fact, Buy with Prime has been shown to increase shopper conversion by 25% on average, according to internal Amazon data. This data point measures the average increase in shoppers who placed an order when Buy with Prime was an available purchase option versus when it was not, during the same time period.

👠 D’Amelio family’s new footwear line to launch May 2023 TikTok stars Charli and Dixie D’Amelio have been working to translate their social media success into a business empire with help from their parents, Marc and Heidi. In addition to brand deals and sponsorships, the famous family has been investing in startups through a new VC fund, 444 Capital, and this past fall announced plans to launch their own fashion, beauty and lifestyle businesses, as well.

👀 Instagram is removing the Shop tab, moving Reels from the center spot in design overhaul next month "Instagram announced today it will simplify its in-app navigation after years of confusing changes designed to push various products like Instagram Shop and Reels. The company says, starting in February, it will return the Compose button (the plus sign “+”) to the front and centre of the navigation bar at the bottom of the app and it will remove the Shop tab entirely."

⛓ Instagram and Facebook introduce more limits on targeting teens with ads  Meta is making some changes to how its apps handle advertising and young users. Under the new rules, advertisers on Instagram and Facebook won’t be able to leverage as much personalized data to target ads to teens. Users under age 18 will also be newly empowered with more choices about which ads they see and why. Starting next month, Meta will remove the option for targeting advertising to teen users based on gender.

💬 Microsoft Plans to Integrate ChatGPT into its Bing Search Engine Microsoft’s Bing could soon be back in the game, with the tech giant planning to integrate AI-powered ChatGPT into its search engine, which would then enable users to conduct conversational searches in the app.

💰 App Store developers have earned $320 billion to date, says Apple "Apple today shared an update on its subscription businesses and global App Store, noting that the tech company has now paid out a record $320 billion to app developers since 2008 — a number that reflects the revenue apps have generated, minus Apple’s commission. In addition, the tech giant said it now has more than 900 million paid subscriptions across Apple services, with subscriptions on the App Store driving a “significant” part of that figure."

🔥 Meta Fined $414 Million, Forced to Change its Approach to Ad Personalization in Europe Meta could be forced to make significant changes to its targeted ad offerings in Europe, after EU regulators ruled that the company has been illegally forcing users to effectively accept personalized ads in its apps. The ruling, along with a fine of €390 million ($US414 million), could force Meta to restructure its current ad systems, and how it gains user permission for such within its apps. Effectively, the ruling suggests that Meta may need to get direct legal consent from each of its 408 million EU users in order to show them personalized ads – or it risks further fines for breaching the EU’s GDPR.

🚀 How to Take Advantage of Meta’s Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns Meta’s Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns, often abbreviated and called ASC, are automated product promotion campaigns that use machine learning to dynamically serve your ads to the audiences most likely to convert, while better utilizing your advertising budget. ASC eliminates manual ad creation steps and according to Meta, ‘automates up to 150 creative combinations at once’.

📈 Top trends:

Nest Commerce Paid Social

Quarterly trends and learnings derived from the Nest Index

Brands include Crew, Wild, Huel, Finisterre, Depop, Spoke and many more.

"Nest was founded by ex-Facebook and Google employees who have worked in paid social advertising since the beginning. We’ve built an agency that looks at paid social from every angle, delivered by our team of performance and creative experts and backed by unique insights surfaced from the Nest Index of over 40 e-commerce brands."

Link to the report here

Pickleball popularity exploded last year, with more than 36 million playing the sport

"More than 36.5 million people played pickleball from August 2021 to August 2022, according to a new report by the Association of Pickleball Professionals released exclusively to CNBC. Earlier data pinned the participation rate of the sport at 5 million players in 2021.

The latest numbers unveiled in the 2023 APP Pickleball Participation report, via a study conducted by YouGov, shows that 14% of Americans played pickleball at least once in that 12-month period. And over 8.5 million people played pickleball eight times or more.

“When you look at participation rates alongside golf, and basketball and tennis. ... I don’t think anybody would have thought a year ago that pickleball would be right up there with those more traditional sports,” said Tom Webb, chief marketing officer of the Association of Pickleball Professionals, the group that represents professional, recreational and amateur players."

Black founders still raised just 1% of all VC funds in 2022

"The latest Crunchbase data shows that Black startup founders in the United States raised around $264 million out of the total $33.6 billion in venture capital allocated in Q4 2022. That’s an uptick from the $178 million — or 0.43% — the group raised in Q3.

In total, U.S. Black founders raised an estimated $2.254 billion out of the $215.9 billion in U.S. venture capital allocated last year. That’s about 1%, a slight drop from the 1.3% raised in 2021. Let’s break this down.

So Black founders in the U.S. picked up around 0.79% of VC funds raised in Q4 2022. There was a fear that, during a bear market, investors would retreat to their old-school networks, and the total amount of funding Black founders received last year is practically half the amount they raised in 2021 — a record $4.34 billion (out of around $330 billion in the U.S. and $681 billion globally)."

🙉 Stand out creators:

Logan Paul & KSI - Drink Prime

These guys will go down as some of the greatest creators in the game and I think they'll sell their drinks brand prime for over $1 Billion because of their marketing genius.

Logan Paul & KSI have over a hundred million followers between them.

Link to Prime's Instagram here

They are right at the top of the pack when it comes to the influencer world.

At their peak, they launch the brand "Prime"

First, they took on the hydration market with a low-calorie, low-sugar drink and now they're doing the same with the energy market.

They're already sailing past $50 million in sales not long after launch.

Unheard of for such a young brand.

I recently watched the Netflix series The Defiant Ones following the legendary story of Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine and one of the details of the episode was how they built and sold Beats Headphones to Apple for $3 Billion.

They were working with greats in the music industry at the time and were mastering the act of product placement. Every music video, every party, and every major event they would get celebrities to wear Beats headphones.

It seems like Logan & KSI have taken this playbook and run with it.

One of the fastest a drinks brands has ever got to 1 million followers on Instagram

Stocked in major stores like Walmart, Target, and Kroger all across the USA & the UK.

It's selling out so fast in the UK that one woman even spent £1200 for 12 cans. Link to story here

Official Hydration partner of Arsenal football club

Famous rapper Snoop Dog.

🐦 Twitter thread of the week:

Link to the thread here

🤝 Hot jobs:

Charlotte Tilbury Beauty - International Marketing Director As the International Marketing Director in the Global Brand Marketing team, you will be responsible for driving strategy, collaboration, consistency, and best practise across all our regions (UK, EMEA, NA, APAC, China, and Travel Retail). With the ambition of being the #1 premium beauty brand in the world, you will be instrumental in ensuring the global brand strategy is consistent across the globe. You will understand our customer proposition, innovation priorities, assortment strategy, marketing & communications strategies, distribution guardrails and work with our regional colleagues to ensure flawless execution.

Ted Baker - Marketing Director The Marketing Director is a primary custodian of the Ted Baker brand and culture. Bringing energy, being prepared to make challenging decisions, inspiring through vision and clarity and upholding the corporate values. Truly omni-channel, ranging from retail to social media, The Marketing & Community team connect the science and the art of the Ted Baker seasonal go to market strategy with the hearts and minds of our consumers around the world.

Endeavor - Consumer Marketing Director, Arts & Entertainment We are looking for an experienced & passionate Marketing Director to join our team and support the VP of Consumer Marketing in developing first-class marketing for several lifestyle events in the Arts & Entertainment portfolio. There is also an opportunity to support and grow some of our other new, owned, and operated properties.