1. Twitter introduces new e-commerce features for tweets

Twitter confirmed it’s testing a new way to display tweets that link out to e-commerce product pages — like products on a Shopify store, for example. With a new Twitter card format, the company is experimenting with tweets that include a big “Shop” button and integrate product details directly into the tweet itself, including the product name, shop name and product pricing.

The experiment was spotted by social media consultant Matt Navarra who tweeted out screenshots of the new experience. The original poster, based in Qatar, had seen the experiment on an Android device.

This format could potentially come into play as part of Twitter’s larger push to become a creator platform, with its recently announced plans for a “Super Follow” subscription. The new product will allow Twitter users to follow a particular account for subscriber-only perks like newsletters, exclusive content, a supporter badge and other deals and discounts. A more “shoppable” tweet format could allow these creators to direct their fans to products and merchandise.

  1. Online sales keep booming as store shopping picks up

Consumers are beginning to return to brick-and-mortar stores, but not necessarily at the expense of e-commerce.
According to the new Reopening Shopping Behavior Index from market research company Numerator, online sales continue to surge, with 2021 year-to-date sales roughly 1.7 times above 2020 levels and two times above 2019 levels. Online order sizes are up 7% from 2020, but down 5% from 2019, driven by more frequent, smaller online orders.

Overall spend per trip remains elevated compared to prior years across channels (up 12% vs. 2020 and 13% vs. 2019), mostly driven by in-store trips. Consumers are still buying bigger baskets (larger orders) in 2021 compared to 2020 and 2019, a dynamic that Numerator expects will likely soften as consumers return to pre-pandemic behaviors.

In one good sign for brick-and-mortar retail, Numerator finds that gas & convenience channel sales, hit hard during the pandemic, are starting to rebound. Sales in this vertical are indexing above year-ago levels for the first time in 2021 (up 27% vs 2020), which Numerator says is likely due to increased travel and activity as reopening efforts increase.

  1. Ecommerce Optimization Leader Ideoclick Launches Pulse Advertising

Ideoclick, Inc., the provider of the industry’s leading e-commerce optimization platform, today launched Pulse Advertising, an intelligent media investment tool built for Amazon and other retail media networks to help brands unlock sustainable competitive advantage and a winning e-commerce strategy.

Pulse Advertising puts performance data in context so brands can optimize every ad budget, make better business decisions, and find the best opportunities to win on Amazon and beyond. The tool is a part of Ideoclick’s new Pulse Platform, an e-commerce action suite that merges data and insights into automatic action. With Pulse, every aspect of a brand’s e-commerce business is measured, monitored, and resolved to drive growth.

An evolution of Ideoclick’s digital advertising solutions, Pulse Advertising consolidates ad tech functionality, enabling deep visibility into key metrics across the platform and the ability to adapt performance in real-time. Pulse Advertising offers robust reports that provide rich insights on performance and optimization opportunities across a variety of retail media networks, including Amazon.

“Intelligent insights and advanced data products are the future foundation of a transformational advertising solution as these campaigns are very difficult to manage when systems and data are disparate,” said Ben Winters, Chief Innovation Officer of Ideoclick. “For brands looking to manage e-commerce campaigns at scale and evolve on a 60-day innovation cycle, it’s critical they have visibility into their data and the ability to translate those insights into automated, smart programs that can grow and pivot in real time.”