A weekly podcast with the latest e-commerce news and events. Episode 202 is a recap of Cyber 5 holiday sales with Director of Adobe Digital Insights, Taylor Schreiner.
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Adobe Recap
Taylor Schreiner is the Director of Adobe Digital Insights. He uses Adobe’s data to give us a recap of the Cyber 5 (the five shopping days from Black Friday through Cyber Monday, this year Nov 29 – Dec 2).
- Thanksgiving 11/28 – $4.2B (up 14.5% YoY) below forecast of $4.4B
- Black Friday 11/29 – $7.4B (up 19.6% YoY) below forecast of $7.5B
- Saturday – 11/30 – $3.6B (Up 18% YoY) at forecast
- Sunday – 12/1 – $3.8B
- Monday – 12/2 – $9.4B (up 19.7% YoY) at forecast
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Episode 202 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Wednesday December 4th, 2019.
Automated Transcription of the show
Transcript
Jason:
[0:24] Welcome to the Jason and Scott Show. This is Episode 202 being recorded on December 4th 2019. I’m your host, Jason Retail G. Goldberg. And as usual, I’m here with your co host, Scott Wingo.
Scot:
[0:39] Hey, Jason! And welcome back, Jason Scott. Show listeners we are in the thick of holiday 2019 and are really excited tohave back on the show.
Adobe. And I think this is the fourth time. In fact, check me on that. Jason had one of the interns check.
Jason:
[0:54] I I actually had one of the interns in you. That number. So yes, it’s right.
Scot:
[0:58] Good. All right. Pre pre fact checked. We’re getting pretty. Ah, reliable here of Jason Scott Show.
Um, this year, representing Adobe, we have Taylor Shiner. He is the director of Adobe Digital Insight’s Welcome Taylor.
Taylor:
[1:12] Thanks for having me. Guys. Appreciate it.
Jason:
[1:14] We are excited to be a tailor and a sort of tradition on the show. We always like to give listeners a little bit of background. So can you kind of share with us some highlights of your background? And what your role is it it’ll be.
Taylor:
[1:25] Sure. So I was the 52nd best chess player in Utah in fifth grade.
Ah, And then from there I went into a career in retail. Uh, I went,
to work on Internet insights about 15 years ago with some of the major Internet players across the industry, and I’ve been doing that for a decade and 1/2.
And then about three years ago, I found my dream job here. A WNKW Adobe Digital Insight’s.
We get to tell these amazing stories about how the digital world works, and we get to tell people about how tech and companies and events are changing their digital lives and companies about how those same trends are affecting how they need to run their businesses.
And we get to talk about retail. We get about time travel. We could talk about a whole host of different things.
It’s been fantastic, and I get to work with some amazing data scientists, analysts to develop these insights, and it lets me have conversations like this one with you guys. So it’s a perfect gig, and I love it.
Jason:
[2:24] Possum. So, to recap, this is sort of a career highlight for you right now.
Taylor:
[2:28] Yeah, I like to I like to go from Holly Tyler, but this one, I’m loving it.
Jason:
[2:31] Yeah. Yeah. Pinnacle, I like it and I’m.
Scot:
[2:34] Think Jason means being on our podcast. He wants an explicit answer on them.
Jason:
[2:38] All right.
Taylor:
[2:38] Oh, yes, I’ll give you a quotable thing. Being on the Jason Scott Show is a career highlight to date.
Scot:
[2:45] Boom.
Jason:
[2:45] That boom. Yeah. You’ll see that in the in the preview show. Pretty soon here, Uh, and I’m sure all this insight stuff is gonna be super fascinating. But I have to know first, if you’ve kept up your chest up chess, it all.
Taylor:
[2:57] Uh, only recently in my eight year old has started to learn to play chess, and he’s creeping up on being able to beat me. And that is not acceptable. So.
Jason:
[3:05] Yeah, that’s a losing battle. You could probably keep ahead of him for a little while, but I think, uh, there’s, ah, natural progression there. That’s working against you.
Taylor:
[3:13] I’m afraid so.
Jason:
[3:15] Awesome. Well, let’s jump into the data. So we talk about your date a lot on the show.
We already did. Ah, an episode this week. In fact, what we talked about some of your data, and it always falls on me to describe your data set.
And I’m sure I’d butcher it. So, um, here’s a chance toe kind of refresh our audience from the horse’s mouth. Can you tell us a little bit about, um, what the data set is and how you use it.
Taylor:
[3:38] Sure. So we build a model of US online retail sales based on trillions of Web site visits based on,
tens and back to think over hundreds of millions of skews based on data from thousands of different companies all across the US across.
Ah, you know, a variety of device types.
OS is on other information, and we use that to to plan out, especially on a day by day and occasionally hour by hour basis.
Uh, how we think that that season’s gonna go So he predicted all.
And then we go back and we track on a daily in again, sometimes hourly basis.
How US online retail sales go s Oh, it’s a big data lift, and we spend all year getting to this point to be able to talk Ah, in almost real time about how how the sales were going.
Jason:
[4:33] I got it. And so just make sure my understands. Correct. So, um, there are a ton of major e commerce sites that use an analytics product called the Dhobi Analytics, which is, if you go back far enough, formally. Ahm nature.
And so it. The core of your data set is in aggregated view of all of those customers that are using that analytics tool for for their e commerce sites. Do I have that right?
Taylor:
[5:00] Yes, sir. The majority of the data that we’ve got and this is not including some data from the recent magenta acquisition so that there’s a whole other set of data sources as well as some other things.
We talk about it on the periphery, but the core of the data that we work with our data from opted in. So companies that have chosen to share data with us, um, and for value that we give them.
And so that shared data Anonima ized before we even touch it and aggregated at a very high level so we can talk about these macro trends, but yes, that’s where the data comes from and to be analytics.
Jason:
[5:34] Perfect. And then, um Ah, and that was you already answered.
My fob question in the court date is that you have not integrated any of the new data that you might have access to from Magenta. And if I have it right, you’re also, at this point not really using data from the rest of the adobe marketing cloud.
Taylor:
[5:53] E. I wouldn’t necessarily say that. So we do. Uh, we do a lot of so we haven’t agreed.
A lot of the magenta data allowed us to look at things like shipping and returns that, uh, we’re new renews angles for us, and it certainly gives us these amazing to you into that tail.
Set aside some of the bigger players in terms of e commerce, but we also you used the mark enter data for your candidate to look at so are marking channel Information Ad Cloud, which used to be two mogul, which I worked for.
Uh, we used them for some advertising data around Thanksgiving. So we bring it all the pieces.
Um, but, you know, not all of it necessary goes to the top line number. As you as you say.
Jason:
[6:33] Sure. And then, um, you kind of alluded to this, but you’re not just trying to report on trends from adobe customers.
You’re you’re using some advanced math and you do the customers represent a big chunk of the market. But then you and interpret what the total market is based on the subset that you see. Do I have that? Correct.
Taylor:
[6:56] You do. I could spend a whole other podcast on how we do that, but it sze not do that. Yes, it’s cool math. We do cool math.
Jason:
[6:59] Yeah, let’s not do that. But just call it a cool math.
Yeah, And then the other thing that comes up a lot. And I think you guys are really good in this as well.
Like very often. We talk last year versus this year, and when a lot of vendors report their data, the customers they have this year are different than the customers they have last year.
So when they’re when they’re talking year over year growth and things like that, it’s usually not perfect. Apples to apples.
Um, but because your your, um trying to normalize the data for the whole market before you do it. When?
When you say there is a 20% growth this year versus last year, that’s a pretty accurate number. Drab.
Taylor:
[7:39] Uh, yeah, I think you should. It’s yet. You said that. Really? Well, that’s absolutely That’s.
Jason:
[7:43] Perfect. You can use that in your highlights. Now we’ve reciprocated. Awesome.
Scot:
[7:49] Go. So, uh, now that Jason’s extracted his pound of flesh, let’s Ah, let’s jump in at a high level. How? How would you view Holiday 2019 shaping up?
Taylor:
[7:52] Okay.
[7:59] I think it’s been quite strong. And it has been strong all through today.
In fact, if you let me, I’ll give you, uh, it as, ah, this morning.
So yesterday’s numbers Through the third of December, we saw $84.7 billion in online retail sales, and that’s up 14.8% on last year for the same period.
So that’s a little faster than our aggregate prediction.
But the way that the bottle is trending that out puts us on target to be about 14.1% roughly on our predicted Taff for the season. So and the 14.1%.
I mean, some listeners and people who visit our website will see that last year was particularly strong of the 16% growth year.
But if you look back a few years just 2016 twice 17 this is sort of on par with those growth rates, but on a much larger base now, as we head into almost $150 billion in sales. So it’s it’s pretty huge.
Um, the the other tidbit of information I can give listeners about yesterday.
Giving Tuesday is that it was a $3.3 billion day, which is amazing research and account $3 billion days, the way that when I started in this gig, we counted $1 billion days.
So they’re coming fast and furious. Now, that’s only up about 11% on last year.
[9:23] So, uh, it leaves us open to the question of our consumers.
Have consumers, you know, taking all these early deals on and won’t be spent later, or are they just taking a break on Tuesday and ready to get back out today?
Scot:
[9:38] Yeah, let’s Ah, so it sounds like we’re growing kind of 14% year over year.
Um, if you if you kind of look at the shape of the holiday so far, I know you can’t predict. Well, you don’t know what it’s gonna happen here towards the end. It’s kind of gotten this what I would call a U shape where it’s being more front and loaded and back and loaded.
So the front end is people that have their act together and jump on the deals.
The back end is like Jason I where we’re like, Holy cow. Uh, holiday is here. We should do some shopping on the 23rd.
Um, the, uh does that does that kind of what you’ve seen and is getting more pronounced. Can you tell if you’ve seen the front part of the curve?
I saw some data that said, like, Veterans Day was unusually large and like the early November days were larger. You guess? You know.
Taylor:
[10:24] Absolutely so we saw just points on these numbers from this conversation.
If you look from the beginning, what we call the beginning seasons of the person November roughly right to, um, Wednesday, that hole to the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, that whole period Groot. About 15%.
So that’s what that was about a point 1/4 faster than we would have predicted.
So angry it. We saw a big lift we saw lift above.
We would have expected in that early season it that seems to be attributable to a bunch of, uh, earlier deals.
We had something similar happen last year, but it’s even stronger now where discounts came earlier in electron ICS and computers and televisions.
We also saw that, you know, last year, Thanksgiving itself was a breakout day where you had, despite it can. Suddenly Thanksgiving was growing faster than any other day.
That spike seems to have moved back now to Wednesday, where the Wednesday before Thanksgiving was growing at about 22%.
And I think again, that’s attributable to ah, lot of deals moving forward in time. So and to your point, that really changes the shape of the season.
You know, we used to basically tell a story of like, look, everything is sort of lifting around that Cyber Five said. The days of the 757 days is getting a disproportionate share.
[11:41] That’s still true, but we’re seeing sort of, ah, shift back to earlier sales this year, and that might have to do with the calendar.
But I think it is actually a broader trend of thinking about these pre holiday sales and reality promotions as being think that happened earlier, both for retailers and consumers.
Jason:
[12:02] Yeah, it’s interesting to me. It’s like, um, it feels like in the beginning of the season, you know, there’s there’s a lot of retailers under stress and have to have a good holiday. And there’s this kind of winner take element mentality.
And so we both see Maura aggressive promotions and discounting at the beginning of the season. And I feel like we also see more digital marketing like more investment in ads and things like that, huh?
That really goosed the front half of that. You, um and then I have a hypothesis.
We’ll see if it plays out. But, uh, you know, of course, Amazon has gone toe faster and faster shipping, right? And so that, you know, this would be the first big holiday with with sort of standard one day delivery in various forms.
Walmart, target and some extent, even best Buy have all been forced to sort of match that fast shipping.
So, you know, not that long ago we would have had this this very gentle ramp down of sales as we’d hit shipping cut offs and people would stop buying goods and then they’d just be doing oh, piss or gift cards.
Or things like that because they’d run out of time to get the gifts before the end of, you know, in time for holiday.
But now everyone can be a procrastinator like Scott and I, because so many of the vendors will ship so fast. So it feels like like all of those things conspire together to make the very beginning and the very in these these ah, anomalous bikes or that you shape.
Taylor:
[13:25] I think that’s that’s gonna be absolutely true. And this this year, in particular with this shift, two more by online pickup in store ah, or clicking collect behavior.
And to these accelerated shipping, it’s gonna it’s gonna make people think they can wait longer in the season where they can’t really wait longer to your point.
You know, it’s it’s three weeks away before even those things are gonna be, uh, almost too close to Christmas to shop for Thio to purchase with.
And so you know, I think we’ll see that ramp up at the end of people. Start to panic a little bit.
And that’s also why, by the way, you see jewelry discounts be really strong on, like 20th.
Everybody who’s panicked and realize they haven’t gotten anything starts. Uh, just looking for something nice and blinking. Tow. Give us a gift.
Jason:
[14:09] Interesting. I was always assuming that people just misbehaved right before the holidays. And therefore it was a Yeah, I have no personal experience or data to support that.
Taylor:
[14:13] You may have a better high pop resistant I do on my own. I would draw my contention.
Jason:
[14:20] Just to be clear, honey, if you’re listening, um uh, do you want to jump in to the cyber five, though?
Um, so we just got through those, Uh, can you kind of give us a recap for specifically? How have Thursday through Monday played out?
Taylor:
[14:37] Sure, So overall it’s about $28 billion uh, online purchases over that same time frame, and that’s 10 almost $11 billion of purchases through smartphones.
So overall it was quite strong. Almost 18% if you like those five days over last year, five days with peaks, you been on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, which always kind of blows my mind because I get the question every year.
Are these days too big to really grow outgrow the rest of the season?
And I convictable Maybe next year they will be.
And it’s not not the case, people. Another not only are moving more online, but they’re really focusing a lot of those purchases and increasing amounts on those big days.
S o. You know, several money, for instance, this year was $9.4 billion.
So we’re almost gonna guarantee there is a $10 billion day, uh, barring anything serious happening next year on Cyber Monday, which is,
incredible, and over 1/3 of that, those purchases are really coming on phones.
Eso you’re seeing people not only window shopping actually make purchases on those big days on their phones, especially that’s what cyber Monday when people go sit in front of computers at work.
But you know, people under the table on Thanksgiving.
Uh, people on Black Friday we’ll pretend to hang out with their family, but but by where? Two things. Anyway, Uh, that’s really been a mobile story.
[16:06] And then the other story of the weekend, which I always, you know, you’re talking about how, by a and pick up in store, uh is ah, you know, it is a capability that my drive people to wait a little longer for their purchases.
But nonetheless, we saw a big bump in bogus activity.
Even on that, that major weekend without 40% more purchases.
Then we had when we saw last year over the same timeframe, so outstripping overall gross and really pushing both share up.
Jason:
[16:38] Interesting. And so And if I think of it from a historical perspective, you know, 10 years ago a few people had reliable Internet and so, you know, cyber Monday or we’ll call 20 years ago.
Several Monday became a big thing, like we’d all enjoy Thanksgiving. We’d go to work on Monday, steal our bosses Internet and go shopping.
And so that was like the one day spike.
And then, as as, uh, you know, we all became ubiquitously online.
The traditional big shopping day Black Friday also became a big online day.
And in fact, I feel like they’re often are these forecasts that that Friday is eventually going to surpass Monday online, which seems like, hasn’t happened yet. Read joy. I have that, right?
Taylor:
[17:23] But it hasn’t quick hasn’t gotten there yet. Uh oh, no. Didn’t you thought?
Jason:
[17:25] Yep. And then I’ll go ahead,
I was gonna say, And then increasingly, those other days in the weekend have grown to be extraordinarily meaningful.
So, you know, frankly, 10 years ago, we talk a lot about cyber Monday.
I actually don’t care as much specifically about the results on Cyber Monday, because if it feels like the the aggregate results of the Cyber five is much more important and indicative of how holidays going than any one day in the,
in that block nowadays, is that a good way to look at it, or am I being shortsighted?
Taylor:
[17:59] No, I would agree with that. And I think what’s always fascinating to me and is, uh, topic of a longer conversation. Is that to your point?
There’s no need necessarily now for Cyber Monday. Everybody’s not only got good Internet access at home, they’ve got good Internet Internet access in their hands.
But we have become so habituated to that day being a major sales day, and both on the consumer and the retailer side that it continues to grow on.
The psychology of this often drives a lot of the behavior even beyond the pricing or the deal’s or anything that our model might pick up.
So to your point, you know, I think if you just looked at the data, you might think, Hey, look, this is all going to smooth out a little bit.
But people continue to think about those days as the big days to go shopping, Uh, online and offline.
Jason:
[18:47] Interesting. So you’re saying people might be willing to go shopping even when it’s slightly irrational? Interesting. No.
Thank God for that, by the way. Yeah, and along those lines, it feels like folks have been trying thio kind of make hay in some of those other days.
Taylor:
[18:54] It’s a new fighting I came up with. Yeah.
Jason:
[19:04] Like for a while now, that that Saturday has been small business Saturday.
Taylor:
[19:09] You okay?
Jason:
[19:10] Andi, I think there’s a couple of people trying to grab Sunday now, too, right? It is. I’m trying to, uh.
Taylor:
[19:15] Yeah. Super Sunday has a bunch of different cuts at it.
Exactly. And there are big days. Now we’re talking about, uh, you know, there, there.
Three and 1/2. Almost $4 billion each.
This is It’s massive any other day of the year and we would be having a conversation about a particular $3 billion day.
But they just come fast and furious between November and Christmas.
Scot:
[19:42] Do you do? You have? Ah, At the end of the season, everyone has a different word. Just be like free shipping day. And then I think it’s called Green Dares. But you guys, what is what is last year like? Was there a bump? And is it? How does that compare to, like, Cyber Monday?
Taylor:
[19:51] And.
[19:58] So we said we would see ramps toward the end of last year, and I don’t have the last little couple days to hand. But they were more closer to sort of Super Saturday and or even smaller than that in the $2 billion range.
Um, as you had in there. They’re not the ones bigger ripped last year, but two earlier point.
I’m really curious to see if we don’t see a big bump. Uh, come to the 20th 19.
Scot:
[20:24] Yeah. Hey, this is just kind of came to me. So it’s if you don’t have an answer. I understand. So last year we grew 16%. This year we’re growing 14.
Where do you think that 2% Delta is coming from? Is it just kind of across the board, or is it a certain category underperforming? You have any Any thoughts on the.
Taylor:
[20:44] I have some thoughts, and I think it’ll be really interesting conversation to have in a few weeks.
But the the, um, the couple things, first of all the models telling us 14 ish, Um, my gut says there might be more upside risk there than downside.
So somebody get my clothes.
What seems to be the case so far in the data is that there wasn’t proportionately even bigger push into the early season.
Um, because of, uh, a CZ people moved into Thanksgiving on on that Wednesday, some of his deals move forward.
But honestly, if you just if you just look at the math, which is, uh, what we particularly good at,
the just pushing the season shorter between Thanksgiving and Christmas is about a $1,000,000,000 which is, you know, 50 bases, 50 of those basis points, uh, arm or sorry on its own.
So between a little bit of merging of error and that some of those basis points and ah, uh, and not the shock of all these earlier deals that got everybody accelerated between those three things you kind of get to, uh, the delta.
Scot:
[21:53] So the jury’s still out. Kind of depends on how the models perform and how people react to those missing days.
Taylor:
[21:59] Yeah, exactly. If we get a big surge and everybody. Service comes off of the off several Monday and thinks, Gosh, I got a sprint toward, uh, toward River Last shipping days game. I’ll be very different than everybody feel like.
Gosh, I blew my budget on all those early deals.
Scot:
[22:16] Yeah, cool. It wouldn’t be a Jason and Scott show if we didn’t talk a little bit about Amazon.
And I understand if you can’t talk specifically about anyone, retailer or whatnot.
But any insights into how Amazons holidays going big, they put out their annual release that said something like Vague like We sold hundreds of millions of dollars.
You know, third parties did great. So so it always befuddles Wall Street when they kind of without these puzzle boxes for them to figure, figure out.
Taylor:
[22:45] Yeah. J. J. Abrams doing the press releases? No, I, uh you said you wouldn’t be your podcast if you didn’t ask about Amazon.
It wouldn’t be a doubIe response. I didn’t say we don’t talk about particular retailers, but what I can say eyes we do track the biggest and the smallest against each other Really looking at.
Especially as you see two big trends that big.
A lot of discussion about big, big retailers pushing, couldn’t collect, pushing one day shipping, having great deals.
Ah, and a lot of democratization of, uh, e commerce. As you know, a lot of art form.
We have five farm, those others that makes that much easier for people to bring businesses to the market.
So those two forces air going on, um, in the on the average, uh, you see big companies outperforming smaller ones in terms of growth.
So if you compare November an average day in November to an average day in October for the big companies they’re up about, these are $1,000,000,000 plus companies.
[23:42] They’re up about 87% in sales, whereas the smaller companies in the 50 million lower range.
So these are the small ones are up only about 43% and some of it is.
It’s coming from the East from the data, at least, is coming from two things. One is the larger companies are much better at mobile conversions, that 80% better at taking a customer and bringing them to purchase on a phone than the smaller companies.
And consequently, they get about 10% more of their share.
Their revenue from those phones and the way that I reviewed the data is that if you’re a consumer and you are going to a big retailer, that big retailer has a number of advantages, including a wide set of products wide set of,
promotions generally really good, aye, aye at connecting you with those promotions,
and a really the slick, speedy checkout process that they worked on really hard.
And for the smaller companies, they obviously have quite a selection.
Some of them haven’t figured out how to turn customers, uh, into buyers swiftly.
But the last thing I would say this is the most important part about this is I am talking about the averages.
So, you know, in the smaller companies, there’s a lot of entry, a lot of people trying things out on a lot of exit, and there are within that average a huge number of small companies who are just blowing the doors off.
It’s just that on average, they’re not doing as well as the very big ones.
Jason:
[25:09] Sure that makes sense. Um, you talked a little bit about Omni Channel. I wanted to jump into that for just a second.
That seems like an area where, in particular, a lot of the big companies have made major visible investments in their infrastructure.
So of course you know, Target, but shipped. And then now that’s heavily integrated. And they have rich like same day delivery and curbside pickup options available across all their mobile platforms.
Wal Mart, you know, has has done a bunch for general merchandise Omni Channel. But even more for grocery, um, and curbside pick up and and all of those things even, um ah, the Amazon.
You know, although much more footprints are starting to get a little better at Omni Channel with their with their small footprint of retail stores, um is any indication of that’s paying off?
Like Are you guys ableto to see an Omni Channel transaction versus a pure digital transaction? And is there any like is the rate of growth of those Omni Channel transactions faster than overall?
Taylor:
[26:15] Oh, yeah. So we’re we’re seeing a Z, said rumor, roughly in the 14 to 16% range growth for the overall market place, but for by online picker in starker POTUS.
Another word that’s up but, like 40% for the season. So it’s way outstripping overall sales.
And what’s also really interesting is we see that this has a little bit to do with larger, so small.
But we see that companies that offer, uh oh, this, uh, 20% better at converting, then companies that don’t offer both us.
So people are coming there specifically for that capability, or at least finding that capability incredibly valuable to them.
At my my thought on this is Look, we got a phone in her hand that has moved the display window experience into your hand. It’s moved the checkout experience into your hands, and everybody just wants to move that fulfillment.
That one thing in between the human experience, closer and closer and you know, one day shipping is great, but, uh, sometimes it’s just easier if you drive down in about 10 minutes and go pick up the thing you just saw and knew you wanted.
[27:25] And plus these guys are. You know what we see in the survey data to is it?
This is good for the brick and mortar stores that not only are they know is you guys know that not only are they making people making purchases online and sitting in the car and getting that that pickup, they’re also going to the store and buying another thing, could they thought of it.
I’m driving that That makes it different. Step for brick and mortar stores as well.
Scot:
[27:47] Wrinkle. Um, you’ve hit on this a little bit, but let’s talk about mobile. So, um, do you guys, when I talk about mobile, I tend to take tablet out, and it seems like you do to you. You seem to be explicitly calling out smartphone.
Um, so you mentioned. I think I can’t remember. Was it black Friday? You said it was. 1/3 of the sales came from a bull. Ah, talk us through any other kind of insights on the mobile side.
Taylor:
[28:12] Sure s o your point. We tried. We tried crier years to be really disciplined about mobile version smartphone.
We’ve been a little acts this year because tablets are decreasing share. So smartphone really had started crossed That that 1/3 threshold on major days in terms of dollars spent, it was always has been for the past several years.
The majority visits were coming from phone, so people were doing initiating their shopping.
We had this challenge empire years and still have some do now that they weren’t closing the deal.
Uh, from that we’ll visit either not at all or going to the desktop to purchase.
That gap continues to close. In fact, on Christmas this year, we expect to have the first day in us where the majority of online purchases actually come through a phone.
As people aren’t going to their computers and their families are around, they’re actually using boats.
That purchase and the things that are driving this, at least in the data that we see are two really interesting and related points.
One is that time per visit is going down rapidly.
So, consumer, they’re coming. They’re not messing around.
[29:20] They’re looking for and expecting the product that they that they came for at least a product to buy.
And some of that is going to be in part because your connection speed have gotten faster. Screens gotten bigger processes were faster, but also retailers have gotten much better at streamlining that process.
I’m the mobile phone, and consequently, the amount of money that people are spending per minute per second on a mobile phone continues to skyrocket month after month, year after year.
As people just get faster making those purchases, especially with a lot of them. You check out options that make make it easier than, say, trying to type in the numbers on your credit card.
Jason:
[30:03] Fascinating. The, um that would be cool if, uh, Christmas did end up being the first, like, majority mobile day.
Um, I was also truce. You mentioned something earlier.
Um, that sounds like that. I call it a mobile gap when traffic side, but conversions lower.
And it sounds like that mobile gap is getting lower for big companies. And you said it a couple reasons why that might be, um, in general. Do you feel like that?
Like, Is that mobile gap? Um, getting narrower across the border. Is it only for large companies that they’re they’re being successful closing that gap?
Taylor:
[30:39] Well, I think large companies again, it has to do it so that the broad, um uh, you know, there’s a much broader array of outcomes and smaller companies than larger ones, so it’s harder to paint them with the same brush.
The large companies obviously have focused on this. Figure it out.
They can track per second per user per region per item, how much time consumers are willing to tolerate and they can achieve those things down.
If nothing else, would I just bring more machines online?
Smaller businesses don’t always have that ability, but the platforms,
one of which Toby has but the Platform three Commerce are making that whole process from visit to fulfillment and even marking channel much, much more streamlined, especially for small businesses.
Who, uh, we think about that a little bit and focus on what their consumers experience needs to be.
Jason:
[31:34] Got it. So one A transition briefly to profitability. So last year I feel like the narrative would have been, ah, you know, a big growth year, a jump from the previous year.
But a lot of people felt like it was Ah, that was partly attributed thio heavier than usual promotions, which meant it actually ended up being, you know, not a phenomenal profitability year.
Um, and so this year, we’re seeing the rate of growth slow a little bit from last year.
Is there any reason to believe that people are being more conservative on promotions or are you have any insights about how we’re gonna come out from promotions and profitability perspective?
Taylor:
[32:18] So, you know, I’ll be honest with you were really good about figure out the revenue. We’re really good about throwing out prices. We are generally missing that third piece of costs that allows you to talk about profitability.
But I’ll tell you what. I was thinking about this this morning and last night and looking at, but began for a bunch of different angles in our data and frankly, that the short answer is the results are mixed.
So we did. If you asked me a week or so ago, uh or even to I would have said, Look, the discount seem to be moving forward, especially in electronics.
Um, and so, you know, maybe the maybe the profit margins are slimming, but then we started. Look at toys and toys. Bottom out, quickly.
Um, uh, you know, maybe once the Toys R Us process was was through the toy discounts didn’t go is deep.
This year’s they did last year, and we’re seeing something we saw. For instance, we elected appliances, appliances discounts for a little later last year.
So exactly how the profit margins are gonna go. Hard to say.
But the, um, you’re in the revenue looks really strong.
So, you know, I think the jury is ah, bit out where possibilities go in.
But I don’t for consumers see, a year where we’re like have massively deeper discounts than the last year. We just have them earlier and on particular product.
Jason:
[33:38] Got that? Uh, that makes sense, and I agree. It’s It’s really hard to get a clear picture until well after the fact on the promotions, because there’s like there’s promotions and pricing effects and all these other things.
But one thing that seems like it might be coming to play a little bit more on profitability this year is profitability like there’s a couple Evers one.
Is that pricing a promotion? Another is the cost of acquisition.
Um, and I do feel like folks. There’s a lot of folks that used the Adobe marketing cloud, um, for further cost of acquisition.
Like, Are you guys seeing any trends around higher advertising rates or spend rates than previous years, or is that not something you guys are looking at you?
Taylor:
[34:18] So we don’t. We have looked at overall investment in advertising.
That could be a fairly complicated thing to grab to look into. But we have looked at performance and individual, Um, your ad level pricing and what’s interesting is we definitely see if you’re if you’re advertising, especially in video, but also on display or search.
You’re gonna see costs go up, um, a bit as everybody sort of pores online and wants to wants to acquire customers in the video room. That’s about 23% higher CBN’s.
But when we look at performance, metrics does go up by an even greater amount.
So, uh, you know, again in video that we’re pressed about 20% performance in terms of, uh, viewable completions of videos are going up 30%.
Or we see, for instance, your email efficacy goes up quite a bit over that that same time frame.
So we should We haven’t reached a point of diminishing return earns uh, in those areas yet where prices start outstripped performance growth, and I think there’s a lot of opportunity for customer acquisition there on dhe.
Advertisers and marketers have figured that out and are pouring the money, and now when it’s, uh, it’s most productive.
Jason:
[35:32] That that makes sense, and that’s gonna be a great place to leave it, because we have, ah, slightly exceeded are a lot of time for this show.
But as always, if we didn’t get to something that folks want to talk about, your welcome and I hit us up on Twitter or leaves the question on our Facebook page, as always, have you enjoyed the show?
We’d really appreciate it if you, um, jump on Thio iTunes and give us that five star review were also nominated for this vendor of the year award in our category, So I’ll put a link in the show notes.
If you could take a couple minutes and vote for us, we’d really appreciate that. But Taylor really appreciate you being on the show and sharing the data. I know it’s a busy week for you.
Taylor:
[36:10] Thank you guys so much. Really appreciate the opportunity.
Scot:
[36:13] Thanks, Taylor.
Jason:
[36:13] Until next time. Happy commercing.
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