Category: Featured News

Digital commerce experienced significant growth in 2015 due to holiday shopping

E-commerce saw a surge during the 2015 holiday season, with many consumers opting to do their shopping online rather than only visit physical stores. A new report from comScore shows that many consumers took to their computers and smartphones to get their holiday shopping done. Mobile commerce, in particularly, proved to be somewhat popular among consumers, as they saw shopping from their mobile devices more convenient than visiting a traditional retail store.

Mobile commerce is becoming a very powerful force in the retail space

According to the report from comScore, mobile commerce saw significant growth in 2015. The mobile commerce sector grew by 59% over what it had been in 2014, with growth being driven by the number of companies becoming involved in the mobile commerce space and consumers seeing mobile shopping as more convenient. Overall, digital commerce reached $69.08 billion between November 1 and December 31 last year. While this falls below what comScore had predicted last year, this still represents a significant degree of success for the e-commerce space as a whole.

Consumers are beginning to favor the convenience of mobile shopping

Notably, mobile commerce performed better than what comScore had predicted for the holiday season. Many consumers opted to shop for and purchase products that they were interested in with their smartphones and tablets. Retailers had prepared to engage mobile consumers throughout 2015 and found that their efforts had been successful. Due to the success of mobile commerce, retailers are likely to participate more in the mobile space in order to create a more dynamic connection with customers.

Cyber Monday proves to be the most successful day for online shopping

According to comScore, the single largest online shopping day of 2015 was Cyber Monday, which was November 30. During that single day, some $2.3 billion in online sales were reported throughout the retail sector. Companies like Amazon and eBay found the most success in the online retail space, but traditional retailers have also begun to embrace the digital world, create a degree of competition and providing consumers with more options when it comes to e-commerce.

The social network is currently testing out advertisements placed on mobile web pages for a considerable expansion.

The largest social network in the world is using its Facebook Audience Network (FAN) in order to test new mobile ad placements on smartphone friendly web pages according to recent reports issued by AdExchanger.

The initial reports of this new mobile marketing effort has said that the placements are being made with almost 10 publishers.

Prior to this recent mobile ad placement strategy, FAN had been used for placing advertisements in smartphone apps. In the last quarter of 2015, there was a reported $1 billion run rate achieved by FAN. Therefore, by adding mobile web pages on top of the placements that are already being added to apps, there could be a considerable opportunity for Facebook and advertisers, alike.

Among the firms to test out the new mobile ad placements is the social publisher called Diply.

That publisher is testing out the mobile marketing strategy in a closed beta test. This was confirmed officially by Facebook by way of the AdExchanter report. This latest step in mobile advertised is believed to be the most recent move that Facebook is taking in order to provide advertisers and marketers with an alternative to using AdSense through Google.

By heading in this direction, it means that Facebook’s FAN will gain access to a full new range of publishers that are looking for new opportunities in mobile marketing. This could potentially present a threat to the market share held by smartphone ad network operators that have already established themselves such as Apple, Google, and Millennial Media (owned by AOL).

FAN was first launched two years ago when Facebook acquired LiveRail. Last year, it was upgraded in order to be able to include native video, greatly changing the nature and scope of this advertising path.

As FAN starts to make its first mobile ad steps into the smartphone optimized web, it has also been speculated that Facebook could start to shake up the current situation in desktop media, as AdSense is currently very established there as the leader but where alternatives have been attempting to chip away at that vast advertising share.