– The shift in ecommerce is towards leveraging zero party intent data for business and ad decisions.
– Current ad decisions are based on a flawed assumption of a quick buying cycle and inaccurate attribution.
– Asking for more relevant data during signup can lead to a better understanding of customers and more effective ad spend.The key action item is to collect more relevant data about the customer journey during signup in order to create a better and more comprehensive experience for visitors, and to use this data to make qualitative decisions about ad spend.The status quo exists until people are brave enough to change it. The next big shift I see in e-commerce is leveraging zero-party intent data to make business decisions and ad decisions. Currently, all ad decisions are based on a return on ad spend within a defined scope of time or 1:1. The quality of the information has fallen off, which has caused everyone to install more pixels, tag more things, and look for cleaner attribution. Attribution has never been accurate though; this is largely a red herring and still is based on the fallacy that ROAS should be measured in a 1:1 capacity. You look at spend over a week and ROAS from that week. Not all people buy in a week though. So the very premise of making decisions all of a sudden is based on a false assumption that people have a quick buying cycle. Pre iOS14.5, the buying cycle was much shorter. This was largely because Facebook was able to aggregate data from a user’s browsing all over the internet and use those signals to run algorithms that put the right products in front of the right people at the right times with much greater accuracy. The shift has happened. Facebook can no longer track people all over the internet to power that algorithm. It now requires more effort on every brand’s side to make better decisions using data that Facebook no longer has access to. The best way to do this is to JUST ASK. Right now, the status quo is to just ask for an email and/or phone number when someone signs up. This is fiercely outdated, but it’s simple and what’s been done forever. One shift to asking for more relevant data related to the customer journey during signup has a cascading impact on your ability to create a better, more comprehensive journey for every visitor and unlocks greater insights than ever before into your ad spend and the quality of the audience backed by data. But only if the data collected is combined with those reporting tools; most are instead focused on personalization, which is a good thing but low impact in comparison. Imagine making decisions on your ad spend from a qualitative perspective instead of a quantitative perspective. Now imagine a world where you can actually combine both of them. This is what I mean by understanding industry shifts and changing the status quo. Learn more about your customers and apply it directly to where you are spending money, and you’ll see outsized results over time. For all you agencies out there, this will save you hours of time a week in spreadsheets, give you clarity and confidence to take action and give you super human powers to predict what will work over a longer time that your traditional ROAS measurements. #ecommerce #marketing #strategyhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/jivanco