Happy Ever After in the Marketplace

Happy Ever After in the Marketplace. Marketplaces have assumed a new prominence in the D2C journey. Retailers such as Amazon have overtaken brand-owned websites as the final shopping destination.

Marketplaces are simply a better match, especially when it comes to user convenience, multi-market ambitions and logistics. If marketers want to win, it’s important to integrate these into wider (social) commerce strategies. Marketplaces also offer a better guarantee to reroute users back into repeated sales.

Permissioned first-party data solutions, like a native checkout, are not coming to life on a global scale so it’s currently not possible to create deep consumer profiles through social media (only). Marketplaces can bridge this gap, ensuring in-signed user experiences to build further on the conversion. This matters for longevity, as shoppers tend to repeat their engagement if the experience is personalized.

Thinking and operating beyond social obviously unlocks measurement and attribution challenges. A positive trend we can see is cross-channel developments becoming bigger and more robust. A few examples: Amazon has its own attribution and analytics solution that can be tied back to commerce activities outside of the platform, while Meta’s Collaborative Ads make it easy and seamless to partner up with retailers, without losing track of sales data.

But marketplaces and retail media have bigger ambitions than just being the last stop in the journey. Amazon wants visitors to invest more time, explore the marketplace and shop serendipitously. The in-app Inspire feature (seemingly influenced by TikTok), is a clear step forward to keep users locked in.

Another great evolution in the connected commerce sphere are crossovers between networks and marketplaces. For instance, Snap made it possible for users to try on AR-led products before checking out directly on Amazon - offering the possibility to showcase other similar products, while getting a better understanding of the shopper’s interests. Snapchat is working with a selection of brands to experiment with AR and speech recognition tech for engaging product and gifting recommendations.

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