Something Very Lucrative

I represent and have marketing rights to a new, patent pending product designed and proven to reduce heating and air conditioning costs by 15% and 12% respectively. Is currently in the final test phase by Sempra Energy, Pacific Gas & Electric, L.A. Water & Power and San Diego Gas & Electric and will be offered as an incentive item with rebate for all buyers. Will be offered by utility companies nationwide following California's lead. Retails for less than $40. Recovers its cost in 2-3 months. Installation is a five minute procedure. Market is all residences, businesses and HVAC dealers. I'm looking for n internet marketer to take the product to the masses. This is a multi-million dollar opportunity. Split profits...shares negotiable. Reach me at BSRVirtual@gmail.com to arrange phone / Skype conversation.

This is interesting. I think the reason why some websites don't put a phone number is that they believe that the resources on-site and on chat should be enough.

Plus, a customer support rep can easily handle several chat windows at the same time. You can even automate some of the processes. But a CS rep can only serve 1 customer call at a time.

A new article on Search Engine Journal says if you're looking for inspiration for your next advertising campaign, you can discover how and why these top campaigns worked and what makes an ad effective.



Keeping up to date with advertising trends keeps you informed of the current 'mood' and feeds ideas for your own advertising and marketing. Just like memes on social media, it's common to see threads and trends develop and it's important to keep track to influence your own marketing and digital marketing efforts. Here, you'll find some of the top advertising campaigns from the last 12 months and reviewing how and why they worked.

1. Draw Ketchup, Heinz: Heinz Ketchup in Canada ran a campaign that perfectly illustrates the power of brand recall. In an inspired meta approach, they used brand recall to show their brand dominance to affirm more brand recall. Heinz achieved this by conducting a social experiment. Without revealing who the experiment was for, they asked random people around the world to illustrate the word 'ketchup'. Of course, all the results show Heinz ketchup bottles (except one guy who drew mustard!). The naivety of the illustrations connects to a sentiment of nostalgia and encourages the viewer of the advert to mentally picture what ketchup means to them.
   
2. The Return, Jif® Peanut Butter: "The Return" hits several metrics of what makes a good advert. First of all, the team at Publicis who conducted the campaign defined the Jif audience as Millennials, and that rap music is a top music genre for this generation. Partnering with a rapper like Ludacris creates a brand association with an influencer that resonates with rap-loving Millennials. The Publicis team conducted social listening research and found that the new styles of rap sounded like the rappers had a mouthful of peanut butter. This led to the perfect connection of how to develop a narrative for their ad. The advert was also promoted with a TikTok campaign challenge using the hashtag #JifRapChallenge.
   
3. Introducing The Icelandverse, Visit Iceland: "Icelandverse" by the tourism board for Iceland is the perfect example of how to jack a current trend. Following Facebook's "Introducing Meta" infomercial, "Icelandverse" was a fast-response spoof video that perfectly captured the incredulous sentiment to the 'Meta' brand announcement. Within just five days of the Facebook ad, "Icelandverse" was launched and has achieved over 1.8million views on YouTube. The narrative for the video is "a revolutionary approach on how to connect with our world without being super weird." It trades a comparison between the features of Iceland and the Metaverse. You can connect with humans (you are human, right?); skies you can see with your eyeballs; caress volcanic rocks.
   
4. End Plastic Waste, Stan Smith For Adidas Original; "It's not easy being green," famously said Kermit the Frog, who narrates the voiceover to this Adidas commercial. As climate change and a theme of sustainability are now essential brand values for fashion brands that want to reach the younger demographics, Adidas has responded with an update on their iconic Stan Smith trainers. The advert featuring Kermit and Stan Smith taps into the current focus on environmental issues combined with the history of the brand. Combining the nostalgic with the modern is always a strong hook for advertising.
   
5. ScissorHandsFree, Cadillac: Who is the target audience for Cadillac? The grown-up Gen Xs who fondly remember the surreal beauty of 1991 "Edward Scissorhands." In advertising, the nostalgia for things from your teens and early years is always a hook for connection, especially for the middle-aged and older. In "ScissorHandsFree," the main character can enjoy the thrill of driving on the open road, even though he has scissors for hands. What a way to sell the benefits of hands-free driving! The advert which is a follow-on from the original film also manages to interweave current themes of diversity and inclusivitFumble, iPhone 12: Yet another advert from Apple that has great timing, great editing, and leaves you a little breathless. Apple is the master of minimalism which they extend to all their campaigns with simple messaging. Trading on the phone's selling feature of the ceramic shield, the ad puts the durability of the phone at the center of the message in a clear and memorable way. The music by Nitin Sawhney contributes to the panic and urgency of trying not to drop a phone.
   
6. Fumble, iPhone 12: Yet another advert from Apple that has great timing, great editing, and leaves you a little breathless. Apple is the master of minimalism which they extend to all their campaigns with simple messaging. Trading on the phone's selling feature of the ceramic shield, the ad puts the durability of the phone at the center of the message in a clear and memorable way. The music by Nitin Sawhney contributes to the panic and urgency of trying not to drop a phone.
   
7. Last Year's Lemons, Bud Light Seltzer Lemonade: When the pandemic happened, at first, brands were paralyzed and unsure of how to proceed. We then had a burst of ads with a homemade feel that drew on the total shock and emotion of what the world was experiencing. Two years down the line, the pandemic is now so seamlessly part of life, we are so over it. Just when we thought we couldn't take any more pandemic-related advertising, Bud Light steps in with the perfect cultural reference of "when you get lemons, you make lemonade." In a brilliant narrative of an apocalyptic event where it starts raining lemons, Bud Light manages to tap into the total chaos of the last two years in a wonderfully bittersweet sentiment. The last throwaway line also perfectly echoes how we are now so burnt out with the pandemic.
   
8. Meet The King, Jimmy John's: Aligning with celebrities and fictional classics translates to trading off the success forged by these real and fictional characters. You could call it success-jacking or value-jacking. It's why celebrities charge so much for endorsements. Of course, not everyone can afford to make a Goodfellas-style short film. But, it is possible to leverage this technique by understanding your audience and using cultural references they respect. In this case, Jimmy John's did have the budget for a short film aired in the coveted Super Bowl slot. With a hint of humor and a lot of Goodfellas-style direction, this ad provides a brand positioning and alignment with a certain audience.
   
9. The Ad Where Nothing Happens, Progressive Insurance: In another post-pandemic reference, Progressive Insurance chooses not to make a flashy advert to give people a break from the events of the last few years. "People have been through a lot." Well-written and perfectly hits the current sentiment of burnout. Progressive Insurance clearly knows their demographic as they also throw in the brilliant cultural reference to an aged NSYNC that only someone who grew up in the 90s would get. A simple message delivered dressed up as a basic advert that is nuanced with subtle humor.
   
10. Jessica Long's Story, Toyota: Saving the tear-jerker for last. The power of the inspiring story. This advert taps into current themes of diversity and inclusivity combined with the hero's journey. Toyota shows the real-life story of an athlete that represents how anyone can overcome, even if their "life is not always easy." The perfect antidote to shake us out of any lingering post-pandemic self-pity. It hits social sentiment perfectly. The advert does feel like something Nike would make, but Toyota is a sponsor for the Olympic team. Rather than selling a product, Toyota is using the alignment of positioning with those who work hard to overcome difficulties to succeed in life.

A new article on Search Engine Land reports that the new feature is designed to drive incremental ad revenue while encouraging more engagement from visitors.



Google has launched related search for content pages, a new AdSense feature that displays search terms related to the content of the pages users are reading, the company announced Monday.

Why we care

The main benefit here is that you may be able to get more ad revenue by directing users to your internal search results, where AdSense will show them more ads. Additionally, this is somewhat similar to "related articles" widgets, which means that it can encourage users to explore more of your content.

How it works

Related search for content pages is an AdSense for search feature, meaning that it's designed to monetize your internal site search results. Site owners can create related search units in their AdSense account and stylize them to match their site. Then, they can add the related search unit to their site with a simple code change.

A new article on Search Engine Land says that brands influence consumer perception through the intentional design and execution of their experiences. Here are four steps to get it right.



In the customer experience world, memory is a powerful force that shapes consumer-brand relationships. Unfortunately, memory can be misleading. Brands can't control consumer perception, but they can influence it through the intentional design and execution of their experiences. Success is found by striking a balance between the volatility of memory and the standards and processes proven to have the greatest impact on how consumers experience your brand. Use your data to get there with these four steps:

1. Determine outputs and inputs--then aggregate: With access to so much information, it can be a challenge to determine which data points will bear the most weight for your brand. That's why step one is understanding the data you have at the touchpoint level and spanning across the entire customer journey. The easiest way to do this is by classifying your data into two types--outputs and inputs. Outputs tell us what consumers perceive (e.g., the voice of the customer, social media). Inputs show operational performance (e.g., wait time, compliance, problem resolution) Because customer perception does not always reflect the reality of a company's performance, outputs need to be brought together with inputs to determine the true state of your customer experience. This baseline is critical for identifying which specific tactics are required to really move the needle on your CX. It will also allow you to establish better governance and efficiency across historically disconnected measurement programs by creating one source of truth for data and, more importantly, a centralized environment for managing the resulting actions and improvement efforts.
   
2. Prioritize where to focus through analytics: Sorting your data is the easy part. You'll still have to make sense of what the data tells you--and that requires analytics. Predictive analytics can be used to correlate your customer and performance data sets to determine which operational practices have the highest likelihood of giving your brand the greatest future lift in customer perception. Brands are sometimes inclined to start with their lowest scoring metrics, but not all touchpoints are created equal. There are likely areas where you are scoring just below where you'd like to be, and where a little more movement in the right direction can have a major impact on your overall customer experience. If you're a car rental company, customers will tell you that the efficiency of the rental process is critically important. At first glance, you might want to focus on a metric like reducing the time it takes for a customer to pick up their vehicle. Without analyzing how those operational behaviors impact customer perception, you may never know that increased speed of service could unintentionally lead to negative consequences later in the customer journey. Perhaps you do not take the time to fully explain fees up front; this will potentially cause misaligned expectations at the end of the experience, negating any positive emotions generated by earlier efficiencies.
   
3. Connect opportunities to solutions: There is no need to completely reinvent the wheel when connecting opportunities to solutions--often it comes down to a simple case of recommending the tools you already have for the right job at the right time, making the choice to take action the easy thing to do. Brands already collect vast amounts of data regarding their customer experiences and often make significant investments in creating solutions to address common challenges. In my experience, there is often still a gap in connecting those solutions to the challenges they're intended to solve, making improvement inherently more difficult than it needs to be. Brands fail to effectively serve up the solutions available at their fingertips--those pioneered by corporate or developed by individual operators--because they are often organized differently or live in disparate systems (e.g., knowledge management system) than how and where the challenges are reported (e.g., business intelligence tool). Once you know the most common challenges in your customer experience, start by developing a common taxonomy and mapping those challenges to your existing solutions (i.e., training, SOPs, physical assets, etc.). Note, this relationship is not one-to-one but one-to-many where a combination of solutions can address a single challenge. Then, establish a simple interface (e.g., an online action planning tool) that allows users to see their challenges and solutions together in one integrated environment that's simple and actionable. Once you have this foundation, you can enrich it over time, adding new solutions through systematic development efforts and crowdsourcing amongst your stakeholders.
   
4. Monitor solutions, then evolve: What gets measured gets done. What's ironic about customer experience measurement is that many programs focus on the score as opposed to what's being done to improve it. To continuously improve--and do it most effectively--you should monitor the progression of metrics that account for customer perception and internal remediation efforts alike. This creates a system of checks and balances which holds your stakeholders accountable for managing what is in his or her direct control: the operation, as opposed to a score that can be influenced by bias and external factors. Ideally, a holistic tracking program captures data around the resulting actions that have been performed for each opportunity, including which solutions were applied, when those remediations went into effect, and most importantly what happened afterward (i.e., did customer satisfaction actually improve as a result of my efforts?).

A new article on Search Engine Land reports that with Core Web Vitals now a key factor in search rankings for mobile and desktop, publishers must act now to safeguard traffic and revenue.



According to a recent analysis of Chrome's User Experience Report, Similar Web and global traffic data, only 31% of websites globally are compliant with all three CWV measures on mobile - just five percentage points higher than when CWVs became official KPIs for site evaluation last summer. But compliance with these user-centric metrics has never been more crucial - with those publishers that boost their search status able to drive higher visibility, traffic and revenue, as well as improved user experience. In fact, Google's own research highlights major gains on mobile of up to 10% ad revenue uplift and 23% higher session duration.

And while site owners might assume they'll have an easier time with desktop - with its superior connections and faster processing - that's not necessarily the case. Figures from the Chrome User Experience Report show that, of the top 1000 media sites globally, only 59% meet the requirements for CLS on desktop. That's even lower than compliance on mobile, at 67%, and leaves publishers at risk of accidental clicks from readers - potentially leading to penalties from Google and a significant hit to revenues.

The risk of sudden changes

Even those with good scores can't afford to be complacent: often, seemingly minor changes to a site, such as adding a new script or vendor, could cause a sudden drop in scores that isn't immediately obvious. For example, one of Clickio's publisher partners saw a significant fall in their CLS score last July, shortly after making some changes to the setup of their Progressive Web App (PWA). While there were seemingly no problems with the site's performance or layout, Clickio's Web Vitals Monitoring service showed that CLS on mobile had dropped from around 90% to under 60% in just a couple of days. However, by spotting the issue quickly, the publisher could test several solutions and fix the issues fast - before they showed up in Google's Search Console or impacted the site's search ranking.

In another case, a publisher working with Clickio had never paid much attention to Core Web Vitals and had not experienced any real issues. This was until last August when they suddenly saw a 16% deduction from their Google AdSense earnings due to invalid traffic. With this increasing to a 26% deduction in September, the website owner was keen to get to the bottom of the problem and began to look into their Web Vitals scores with our real-user monitoring tool. This showed a CLS score under 60%, but after implementing a few quick CSS changes, the site was soon fully compliant again, with all three metrics above 90% and deductions from Google back to almost zero in November.

Time to act

The desktop rollout of CWVs is the latest wake-up call for publishers to enhance their site performance. With many already struggling on mobile, site owners now face the possibility of low scores across both environments if they don't keep a close eye on compliance levels. By using real-user monitoring platforms, publishers can equip themselves with the information required to take stock of their site, understand the user journey, and take swift action to safeguard their search ranking - along with traffic and revenue.

A new article on Search Engine Land reports that SEO and PPC teams can empower each other when they work together. At SMX Next, Allison Duvall and Hannah Johnson of Merkle shared how marketers can create holistic search strategies.



Organic and paid search channels are huge sources of traffic for websites (roughly 68%), yet few marketing teams know how to align the tactics, insights and goals of both effectively. This is why so many search professionals speak of implementing holistic strategies.

Identify opportunities for organic and paid search to work together

"The first thing that we want to do is identify initial opportunities," said Johnson. "We want to get a better understanding of how each team is sharing information -- if they're doing so and how they can better share it." Knowing what type of relationship your SEO and SEM teams have from the get-go will make creating a holistic strategy much easier in the long run. Marketers should identify siloes and areas where data is already shared between both teams, then point to opportunities for improvement.

SEOs can focus on sharing query performance data or competitor research with their paid search counterparts so both teams can tackle the same goals, increasing the chances that their brand grabs greater portions of search real estate. During the same presentation, Allison Duvall, SEM senior manager at Merkle, highlighted information that could be shared from the paid side. "From the SEM side, we're auditing landing page quality scores, working with the SEO team to update landing page wording, and creating or identifying better landing pages to increase the quality score for sets of our keywords," Duvall said.

Educate teams about channel strengths and weaknesses

An important part of bringing SEM and SEO teams together is educating each member about the benefits of each channel. This includes identifying the weaknesses of each as well. The process is designed to help get everyone on the same page and prevent wasted time and resources. "You want to make sure that they [search teams] know what the strengths and weaknesses are of each channel," Johnson said. "So, for SEO, the main points to get across would be that it's high reach, has sustainable long-term results and is relatively low cost." "However, you also want to be aware of the weaknesses of each channel," she added.

When looking at the potential weakness of SEO, Johnson pointed to marketers' lack of control within the search engine results pages (SERPs). And, because Google uses its algorithms to rank queries based on numerous relevancy factors, it takes some time to see results with SEO. Duvall noted some of the most pertinent strengths and weaknesses to be aware of in SEM as well: "We can be agile, react quickly to changing situations . . . We can pause campaigns if we're seeing poor traffic coming through, or if spend needs to change one way or the other."

"For weaknesses, [paid search] management takes time and requires skill, and ad spend can vary based on elements that are out of our control," she added. "These can look like changes in competition or even the SERP landscape." Combining the capabilities of these channels -- while acknowledging the weaknesses of each -- can help marketers plan out successful holistic strategies. The key is to keep everyone in the know. "By combining our forces, we're able to overcome most of these weaknesses that each of the channels faces while creating a long list of strengths," Duvall said.

Analyze the overarching incrementality and enact cross-channel collaboration

Once teams have shared data from organic and paid teams and pinpointed the capabilities of each channel, Johnson and Duvall recommend marketers measure the overarching incrementality -- the benefits attributed to each marketing tactic."You're going to want to analyze that overarching incrementality and the easy way to do that is with a paid and organic report," Johnson said. "Create that report in Google Ads, then you'll want to categorize queries by brand and non-brand." She provided an example of a paid and organic search report (shown below), which shows how marketers can compare branded and non-branded clicks, impressions and click-through rates. It also includes a method of measuring growth differentials between queries where ads and organic results are shown and those with only the ad displayed.

Johnson then shared another chart (shown below) that highlighted the benefits of cross-channel search strategies. Using insights gleaned from keyword sharing, website updates and search coverage reviews for branded and non-branded queries, her team saw a massive increase in year-over-year revenue. "We saw a 55% increase in total revenue," Johnson said. "We also saw a 50% increase in SEO clicks as well as a 162% increase in SEM clicks, with holistic search clicks increasing by 152%." When SEM and SEO teams share data and plan strategies in concert, brands can identify more growth opportunities. Using the latest collaboration and data sharing tools to break down departmental siloes will help search marketers build more holistic campaigns.

Dont you think forms on every page can be very annoying. Also, forms can take end up taking major chunk of your website's folds.

A new article on Martech.org reports on automation and how it can lower costs, improve customer experience, and build a lot of agility into marketing organisations.



The business automation marketing is showing no signs of slowing down. Gartner predicts that the integration/automation market is projected to grow by $32 billion by the end of 2025, scaling nearly 50% in five years alone.

According to Vijay Tella, co-founder and CEO, Workato is converging the three most dynamic markets: iPaaS, full lifecycle API management, and robotic process automation (RPA) to solve for a market with too many specialised tools.

iPaaS is having its moment

Massimo Pezzini, head of research, future of the enterprise at Workato, predicts that organisations will begin to slow investment in B2B gateway software, MFT (managed file transfer), and master data management (bottom-right of the chart below), and increase investment in iPaaS, full lifecycle API management, and data integration tools (bottom-left of the chart). iPaaS will lead the way at a predicted revenue of $9 billion by 2025.

So, how can we attribute the exponential growth of iPaaS? According to Workato, the two leading factors are versatility and ease of use; that makes iPaaS appealing for small to midsize organisations with fewer resources.

What does iPaaS adoption look like specific to marketing operations?

The 2022 Marketo Engage User Study, conducted in partnership with Adobe, found that only 17.7% of Marketo users are currently integrating iPaaS with their Marketo instance. We predict increased adoption in the coming year. Of Marketo users currently integrating iPaaS with Marketo, 44% are using Workato.

Organizations continue to invest in automation

Not only are CIOs onboard with integration technologies, but they also consider them critical to achieving their business goals. Gartner revealed that 34% of CIOs in the U.S. plan to invest more in integration technologies, APIs, and API architecture. Massimo delved into five reasons why automation is crucial for business success:

• Reduce cost and increase efficiency by streamlining processes and minimizing manual errors.
• Improve customer and employee experience by providing an integrated, consistent, intuitive, and conversational user interface.
• Enable business agility and change by incrementally reshaping legacy processes.
• Provide insights and situation awareness by streamlining and minimizing manual errors.
• Building differentiation via innovation by creatively assembling "commodity" systems.

A new article on Martech.org reports that sales enablement platforms are fairly recent introductions to the tech stack, but marketers are readily adopting them to support sales teams.



Sales enablement platforms provide sellers with the content resources they need to engage buyers in a way that adds value, while also educating salespeople on the marketplace through training and coaching. While all of this is going on, sales enablement platforms also track buyers' and sellers' interactions with content, giving marketers and sellers insights into what's working and what's not.

Given all of that promise, marketers are certainly evaluating these technologies and one crucial part of that process is the demo. It's important to set up demos within a relatively short time frame of each other to help make relevant comparisons. Also, make sure that all potential internal users are on the demo call, and pay attention to the following:

• How easy is the platform to use?
• Does the vendor seem to understand our business and our marketing needs?
• Are they showing us our "must-have" features?

Use these 32 questions during the demo to help you gauge whether the platform you are vetting is the right fit for your organization:

• What makes this platform technically unique from all the others?
• How difficult is the platform set up and implementation? How long will it take for us to be up and running on the system?
• How intuitive is the platform user interface? How easy is it for business users to customize the machine learning-based models or settings?
• What is your service reliability guarantee?
• What external resources, such as systems integrators, agencies and consultancies, are familiar with the platform and could be hired to help us get started?
• How scalable is the platform?

Content creation and management

• How intuitive is the interface for ingesting and managing content?
• Does the platform integrate with the tools our team uses for creating content?
• What content creation tools are included or optional within the platform? Do they extend to more advanced options like VR or 3D experiences?
• Does the platform integrate with the solution we're currently using to store content assets?
• What are the organizational structures for content and how can marketers ensure salespeople can find the appropriate content?
• What controls can we put in place to ensure salespeople are only using approved, timely and compliant content?

Analytics

• What are all of the types of interactions that are measurable by the platform?
• Does the platform support recording calls, video conferences and other interactions for analysis?
• How does the platform use AI or machine learning algorithms to analyze the content of interactions with buyers?
• Can we track buyer interactions through the whole purchase cycle from interest to actual conversion? If not, what are the options?
• Can we bring the data gathered in the platform into other tools we use like CRM?

Training and coaching

• What are the different types of formats for training and coaching content?
• What sales methodologies does the platform support?
• What types of reports on salespeople can the platform generate? Training progress? Performance?

Integrations

• What native or out-of-the-box integrations have already been created?
• What happens if I choose to use a tool I'm already using rather than one of the platform modules? How can we ensure they work together smoothly?
• What is pricing based on? What features are included? Are there additional fees (consulting, add-on features, APIs, quotas)?
• What is the minimum contract length? Is there a short-term contract or an "out" clause if things don't work out?
• Is a free trial or pilot program available?
• What are the different modules (if applicable) that we can license individually?
• Who will be our day-to-day contact?
• Who pays if the system/team makes an error?
• What kind of customer support is available? Can I pick up the phone to report problems

Strategy and product roadmap

• Do you have other clients in my vertical?
• How does the company handle requests for product modifications?
• What new features are you considering for the platform? What's the long-term roadmap and launch dates?

A new article on Marketing Dive reports that Nordstrom is broadening its advertising ambitions with the Nordstrom Media Network, a retail media offering the company has been building out for several years but previously shared few details on.



The retailer first started experimenting with the concept in 2019 through off-site campaigns on platforms like Google and Meta, formerly known as Facebook. In 2021's fourth quarter, Nordstrom began placing on-site sponsored ads through the Nordstrom Media Network. The program generated $40 million in revenue last year while working with "hundreds" of brand partners, results that exceeded initial expectations.

Nordstrom Media Network draws on data from 32 million customers and digital properties that accrue roughly 1.9 billion unique annual visits. In the near term, Nordstrom wants to expand ad placements on its core website and Nordstrom Rack, as well as deepen reporting and targeting capabilities for marketers hungry for alternatives to digital platforms that are seeing those features impacted due to privacy changes.

Nordstrom is sharing more details on its advertising program to capture the interest of brands that are adjusting their strategies to account for privacy headwinds that have shaken mainstay platforms. Retail media has grown increasingly competitive as first-party shopper data sees its value increase amid Google's plan to deprecate cookies and Apple making its mobile identifier an opt-in feature. The latter change has already delivered a hit to Facebook campaign performance.

Owning online and in-store points of sale provides an advantage to brick-and-mortar companies that previously felt like second fiddles in the race for digital dollars. While Nordstrom's bid to crack into the space is still early days, it's already generating tens of millions in revenue and has developed close ties to marketers like L'Oréal's Luxe group, which owns the Lancôme and Kiehl's brands. On a call discussing Q4 earnings earlier this week, executives also nodded to an opportunity to help scale newcomers.

"When you look at our digital business, it's large," CEO Erik Nordstrom said on the call with analysts. "It is one of the key attributes that allow us to be the software partner for a lot of up-and-coming brands, especially digitally native brands that we can expose their brands to a lot of people that wouldn't see them otherwise."

Nordstrom is moving quickly to deepen its ad products during a period where other retailers are seeing their own advertising programs hit new levels of maturity. Walmart now generates $2 billion annually from ads and is implementing its own demand-side platform, a complicated piece of ad tech. Target, which also reported earnings this week, said it wants to expand its Roundel media network into a $2 billion business within the next several years.

A new article on Marketing Dive reports that Macy's announced Tuesday a commitment to spend $5 billion by 2025 on efforts to "create a more equitable and sustainable future."



The retailer's social purpose effort, dubbed Mission Every One, was created to drive positive social change and will focus on three areas of impact: people, communities and planet.

Efforts include diversifying company leadership, raising hourly pay, and increasing the use of sustainable materials in its products. With Mission Every One Macy's is making it clear that it is committed to being a socially responsible company.

The new platform, CEO Jeff Gennette said, is a way to show how the retailer is doing that work. "We are transforming our business from a position of legacy to one of leadership," he said in a statement. "In this evolution, how we run the business is as important as what we sell."

Under its "people" pillar Macy's will invest in underrepresented designers, brands and partners across its namesake and Bloomingdale's brands. The company also will achieve 30% ethnically diverse representation at the director level and above by 2025. Macy's reiterated its stance that it will invest in education benefits and will boost minimum hourly pay to $15 per hour by May 1.

Its "communities" effort encompasses donating more than $100 million to nonprofit organizations, another $2 million to support scholarships for underrepresented youth in fashion, design and sustainability programs, and other measures.

The retailer's "planet" endeavor focuses on incorporating more sustainably sourced raw materials and fibers into its private brands, and investing in means of reducing, reusing and repurposing materials to eliminate waste. The company is committing to advance worker's rights with suppliers for its owned brands, which encompasses social and environmental audits of all of the company's tier-1 private brands supplier factories.

Macy's says that its movements towards a more inclusive future is "enterprise-wide" and that the company wants to leverage its scale and culture to make larger changes in the world. "Mission Every One will be an essential part of how we operate and the decisions that we make as a business," Gennette said.