The Criteo S. company announced  the key marketing trends in 2018 in the e-Commerce industry. E-commerce market is growing rapidly: the main asset where retailers and brands get the information about customers and their actions are online and offline. These data help to better understand the motivation of current customers and successfully interact with them.

The company has identified 8 key marketing trends in e-Commerce industry in 2018:

Voice shopping

Contextual advertisements can offer personalized content and recommendations. People are buying more and more products using such smart speakers as Google Nomail Amazon Echo. In the next two years these technologies will become very popular. Smart speakers will be able to advise the relevant services and products due to the abundance of information about customers and their preferences.

Social Commerce

Social networks are gradually becoming a platform for online Commerce. In particular, Facebook introduced the Facebook Marketplace. It was successfully launched in the US, the UK and Australia, and recently the service has expanded itself into further 17 European markets. Amazon launches Amazon Spark, there customers see pictures of different products and are able to instantly place an order. The catch is that social networks protect personal information, so retailers and brands need to find other ways of building relationships with clients.

The integration of offline and online sales

A vivid example is the Amazon company, which in August struck a deal to acquire supermarket chain Whole Foods. The company will have access to offline customers and will be able to better understand buying habits and increase the amount of average check. Other retailers also seek opportunities for collaboration with offline platforms to gain access to their internal CRM databases in order to offer more relevant and personalized advertising campaign online. In addition, large retailers will continue to invent more convenient ways to pick up online orders. Overall, the focus will be put on bringing offline customers into the online space.

Exchange of information

Such tech giants as Facebook and Amazon safeguard the user data of its customers, refusing any information partnerships with other market players. However, to gain competitive advantage retailers and brands will continue to share with each other information about their customers. 72% of heads of marketing believe that the information the partnership will increase revenue, profit and customer satisfaction.

Streamlined product presentation

The advertising departments will look for new ways to present the product, including using the description of the product and its image. The context of grocery photos, big plans in high resolution, images, 360 degree and other tools will become necessary in order to provide online users the best customer experience.

The law on protection of personal data

Regulatory act of the European Union, « General provisions on data protection » will come into force on 25 may 2018 and will radically change the methods of collection and use of personal data. Primarily this will affect companies seeking to interact with European customers and analyze their behavior for marketing purposes. Globally the adoption of this bill will help to build a trusting relationship between clients and those companies that advocate for transparency of business.

Video

The proportion of time that people spend watching video online continues to rise, forcing advertisers and media companies to increase the use of this format. The video is also a priority and social networking resources such as Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and Snapchat are in continuous search of high-quality content. In 2018, the popularity of video will grow, which will lead to a new round of battle for cooperation with programmatic advertisers and their partners.

Partnerships and mergers

Over the past six months several high-profile deals were signed in retail industry such as Amazon and Whole Foods, Amazon and Kohl’s, Walmart and Google Express service. In 2018, retailers will actively seek opportunities for strategic partnerships to remain competitive and to strengthen their expertise, but also to combine online and offline to achieve maximum advantage.

Angelika Buzulukova