4Q Demand Trends; Walgreens Advertising; Commerce Marketing Staffing

As we continue to gather insights on Turkey 5 performance on Amazon, our research suggests many brands have experienced a slight moderation in sales growth in November and early December compared to prior trends. This moderation is likely driven at least in part by pull forward demand from Prime Day in October and Amazon (and its rivals) kicking off holiday events earlier than years past. Our COVID-19 Consumer Study conducted in early November would support this, as 65% reported purchasing holiday gifts on Prime Day this year, and 41% of those consumers reported plans to purchase their remaining holiday gifts on Amazon prior to the Turkey 5 promotional period

Source: AboutAmazon.com

Walgreens Launches its own Paid Advertising Offering:
Last week, Walgreens announced the launch of the Walgreens Advertising Group (wag), an advertising offering for Walgreens-owned platforms and external channels including digital display, video, social, and streaming audio. Walgreens is the most recent of many retailers to build out a paid advertising platform, as retailers look to leverage their unique data sets to attract brand marketing dollars. Our latest benchmark data suggests over half of brands have recently been approached by their omnichannel retailers seeking concessions as a result of increased costs tied to the pandemic, with greater digital marketing investments being the most frequently seen “ask.”

Source: Ad Week

Who Should Manage Commerce Marketing Internally?:
With omnichannel retailers like Walgreens launching and growing their paid media offerings, the lines continue to blur inside brand organizations between sales, marketing, eCommerce, and B&M. This interlinked dynamic creates uncertainty for many brands regarding how to staff for commerce marketing. Our eCommerce Organizational Benchmark shows that currently, the centralized eCommerce team is the most popular team to lead the charge, closely followed by the individual customer teams (e.g. the Walmart.com team manages Walmart.com activations). The gap between these two staffing alternatives is likely to widen in the near future, however, as 39% of brands believe the eCommerce team should be primarily responsible for executing commerce marketing activations, compared to 24% for individual customer teams.

Source: CRC 2020 eCommerce Teams Benchmark, n=122

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