A new study released by out-of-home media company Clear Channel UK revealed that Gen Z (18-24 year olds) are more likely to notice advertisements at sporting events than older generations. Nearly half (49%) of Gen Z respondents said they notice advertising more during sporting events, making them a lucrative target for advertisers. The study of 2,000 respondents further revealed that this younger generation is also the age group most likely to purchase a product repeatedly exposed to them via ads at sporting events, with 42% claiming they do so. These findings highlight that young people have a tendency to become interested in brands and products that they see advertised during sporting events, indicating that it’s an effective medium for raising brand awareness.
Everton Football Club is adopting SmartFrame‘s technology for online image publishing and distribution. The UK-based tech provider will help Everton showcase high-quality imagery and bring fans closer to matches, moments and memories. Under the terms of the new agreement, Everton will gain ownership of its official images and all associated copyright. Alongside the Club’s in-house photography team, leading sports agency action press international and renowned photographer Bob Martin and his team will exclusively distribute images online using SmartFrame’s image-streaming technology. Everton will also benefit from additional commercial revenue derived from SmartFrame’s ad tech solution, which offers occasional advertising and sponsorship placements displayed within images.
Content recommendation platform Taboola has announced that its performance advertising-focused bidding technology, Maximize Conversions, is now available for all advertisers. Mazimize Conversions is an AI-powered technology that enables advertisers to drive more conversions and lower cost for campaigns. By offering this service to all advertisers regardless of the way they set up their campaigns, Taboola is automating the bidding process for campaigns, allowing advertisers to remove the complexities of manual optimisations. This means they can simply share their budget and marketing objectives, and the algorithm will manage their campaigns in the most efficient and effective way possible within the set cost.
Dropshipping and curated marketplace SaaS platform Virtualstock has announced its strategic partnership with Commercetools, a composable commerce company. This collaboration will enhance retail operations by enabling seamless, automated sharing of order and delivery status and stock updates between retailers and their dropship suppliers. The drive towards faster retail practices is particularly crucial as economic and technological shifts change customer expectations and 81% of consumers expect faster customer service. Commercetools and Virtualstock’s connector automates the flow of information between the retailer and their suppliers, ensuring full transparency and visibility of critical data both upstream and downstream via Virtualstock’s REST API. This automation effectively reduces human errors, enhances operational efficiencies, and accelerates both the fulfilment and shipping processes to respond to new customer demands.
BigCommerce has announced a wide range of platform updates and partner integrations as part of the Next Big Thing, its twice yearly product launch. These updates will enable customers to reach more shoppers globally through providing enhanced storefronts, boosting B2B businesses, harnessing the power of AI, converting more shoppers into customers and unlocking new developer functionality. The new product launch features will help better align buyer access permissions to their level of functional account access, unlock productivity and growth with AI and provide tools to help streamline operations and maximise growth.
New research by creator agency, Billion Dollar Boy, shows what creators want from brands when it comes to influencer gifting, with sustainable gifts, personalised gifts and reduced packaging listed as some top priorities. Creators are looking for more than free gifts to motivate them to share content with their audience. They want to shift away from excessive spending and materialism, and are looking for meaningful brand relationships with a third wanting to build a strong relationship with brands during the gifting partnership and over a quarter wanting clear expectations for the partnership. Applying this creator feedback to influencer gifting strategies could help brands build stronger relationships with influencers and reduce mass, wasteful gifting.
Funnel, a marketing intelligence platform, and market insights company Ravn Research have released a report on the state of global marketing department and agency relations. The report draws upon quantitative and qualitative research from 327 in-house marketing professionals and marketing agency leaders, examining existential challenges to agencies. It finds that marketing agencies are facing a triple threat: pressure from regulators and Big Tech, shortages of advanced analytical skills and changing perceptions about the value of agencies themselves, with AI and automation replacing human work in some instances. For example, over two thirds of marketers have no clear, documented roadmap to adapt to the deprecation of third-party cookies. However, more surprisingly, less than 25% of marketing agencies are concerned by the rise of AI.
