Google and Apple were hit with class-action complaints this week for allegedly promoting illegal gambling by distributing gaming apps, and allowing users to make in-app purchases of currency used in the games.

“Google and its chief mobile software competitor, Apple, both allow customers to purchase games that are no more or no less than casino-style slot machines, casino style table games, and other common gambling games,” Alabama resident Maria Valencia-Torres alleges in a complaint brought in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Alabama.

The company was also sued in federal court in Mississippi by Edgar Smith, who makes nearly identical allegations.

In addition, state residents of Alabama, Tennessee, Connecticut and Georgia brought four similar but separate class-action complaints against Apple.

The people who sued all allege that they purchased in-app "coins" hat allowed them to continue playing the games.

For instance, Valencia-Torres says she downloaded the game Slotomania from Google Play and then purchased coins, in order to “continue to play for a chance to win free coins that would enable her to enjoy the game for a longer period of time.”

She says she paid $166.62 “for the privilege of continuing to play the illegal gambling game.”

The state residents in all of the cases are seeking refunds from Apple and Google.

The Facebook page and website owned by conservative, pro-President Trump commentator Dan Bongino have recently hit record engagement.

Posts from Bongino’s Facebook page dominated a list of the top 10-most engaged links in the U.S. on the platform, based on data from analytics platform CrowdTangle and shared on a Twitter account that tracks total daily interactions.

As of midday Friday, eight of the 10 top performing links in the last 24 hours on Facebook were Bongino’s. Fox News and CNN held the No. 3 and No. 9 spots, respectively.

According to social-media analytics firm NewsWhip, which also includes Twitter and Pinterest engagement, headlines on Bongino.com like “Gov. Cuomo Claims Trump Is Responsible for 100% of Coronavirus Deaths In New York” garnered over 191,000 engagements.

According to TheRighting, which analyzes conservative sites’ mobile and desktop traffic, Bongino's site posted a 727% increase in year-over-year unique visitors for August 2020.

Bongino.com attracted 3.14 million unique visitors in August, ranking as TheRightings 16th most-trafficked conservative website, based on Comscore data.

In August 2019, Bongino.com drew just 380,000 unique visitors. 

“The Republican and Democratic national conventions and Biden’s historic selection of Kamala Harris as his running mate dominated the news in August,” stated Howard Polskin, president-chief curator at TheRighting.

“The broad gains in traffic to both conservative and mainstream news websites are strong indicators of our nation’s desire to better understand the volatile political landscape as we get closer to the critical presidential election,” he added.

Bongino, who is a former Secret Service agent and New York Police Department officer, also runs a podcast show.

Online payment network Skipify is working with Google to allow consumers to shop within their emails. 

The new program, the Shoppable Email program, allows Gmail users to add items to their cart and check out based on real-time product information within their emails, Skipify says. 

The arrangement is fueled by Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) for email, a technology that enables shoppers to purchase products without having to link to a web page. 

In July, Verizon Media announced that it was working with Walmart to enable homebound consumers to fill a shopping cart with essential groceries from Walmart within Yahoo Mail.

Brands can join Shoppable Email without changing their email provider in most cases, and there is no additional email coding required of merchants, Skipify says.

AMP is an open-source framework designed to make mobile pages load faster. Extended to email, it leads to “more engaging, interactive, and actionable email experiences,” Google said in 2018. 

But AMP, while central to these high-profile programs, has been growing slowly, as Skipify seems to acknowledge. "We are in the very early stages of a shift to unlock commerce and payments within and across channels,” states Ryth Martin, CEO and Founder of Skipify.

It is also not clear if these individual programs will be restricted to the separate ESPs, limiting circulation for brands.   

Shoppable Email will allow brands to join the program without changing their email provider, and merchants will be relieved of additional coding requirements Skipify says. 

Skipify claims that merchants trying the program so far have seen revenue increases and lower unsubscribe rates. 

The goal is to to “help merchants bring shopping into the inbox for the first time,” Martin says. 

We’ve previously touched on "customer communications," "customer delight" and "customer behavior." Now "customer loyalty" takes center stage among the MediaPost 500 brands. Described by Bombora as “a way of doing business with your customer in a way that provides a positive customer experience before and after the sale in order to drive repeat business, customer loyalty and profits,” "customer loyalty" has been trending upwards since mid-September. After plateauing for the better part of summer, its rise indicates a widespread question: What impact has COVID-19 had on "customer loyalty?" As companies have spent the last few months recovering from disruptions in all its forms – from supply-chain crises and economic slowdown to irregular shopping patterns and new category entrants — they’ll need to rethink their value exchange as the holiday shopping season approaches. 

Interestingly we’ve seen the greatest intent-data disparity this week between brands and agencies concerning "customer acquisition cost" (CAC). This is the cost associated with convincing a customer to buy a product or service through sales and marketing. This is an important metric and one not easy to calculate if you’re looking at customer loyalty over time (e.g. "lifetime customer value"). However, if you want to remain profitable, having a keen understanding of what’s required to acquire new customers and retain existing ones is key. The best marketers should consider both sides of this equation to generate a more holistic understanding of their marketing and sales performances as new digital touch points are added every day. 

Brands and agencies do find themselves on the same page when it comes to in-app advertising – particularly Facebook mobile ads. With smartphones already the primary and sometimes only digital device that many users worldwide own, it’s no wonder that marketers are spending their valuable time adapting their content for the new mobile-only generation. In fact, studies have shown that, by and large, the pandemic didn’t significantly change media consumption habits worldwide. The battle for consumers' limited time and attention is only growing fiercer.  

When talking about marketing in gaming and esports, “authenticity” is often emphasized, while “logo slapping” is heavily criticized.

What exactly does “authenticity” look like to gamers, and how are brands getting it right?

To me, the biggest two aspects of authenticity to gamers are interactivity and creativity within the gaming ecosystem.

Why those two things?

Gaming is one of the most interactive entertainment spaces out there -- if not the most.

Gamers come from an age of hyper-interactivity, where they spam Twitch chats, donate to their favorite streamers and invest tons of money into console and PC rigs, all with ease.

Traditional forms of advertisement don’t exist inside of non-mobile video games, but what do exist are loads of microtransactions that enable players to buy new looks, animations, powers, and more for their favorite characters.

What gets people to buy them is that “cool” factor -- knowing that they can use those items in-game, that all the content directly interacts with their gameplay. The advertising approach to gamers, then, has to keep in mind that same interactivity.

For example, DHL, the global German parcel service, partnered with a number of gaming equipment companies and ESL Gaming to provide a multi-year partnership at ESL’s tournaments.

At a nearly full house event at Barclays in 2019, which I attended, a popular streamer decked out in DHL gear walked out with a DHL package and randomly selected two audience members to compete against each other in a box building contest to win the DHL package full of gamer goods.

Aside from the direct competitive and interactive element, DHL also provided signs for the audience to write custom messages on and hold up during the event. 

At first, it’s hard to imagine a parcel service integrating well with gaming, but through DHL’s example it’s easier to see how the interactivity they utilized to reward gamers at the event led to a clever and engaging partnership. 

Similarly, creativity is key for brands that don’t necessarily fit into gaming at first glance. Brands like Logitech, Samsung and Intel are obvious parts of the gaming ecosystem since they make a lot of the tech that powers or enhances it.

For non-endemic brands, the advertising approach has to show gamers why that brand should be a part of gaming, and to do that effectively requires good creativity -- whether that is strong creative that utilizes gaming assets in its messaging, or showcases a way that gamers themselves would use their product.

Let’s look at one of my favorite examples of both creativity and interactivity -- Louis Vuitton and League of Legends.

Last year, Louis Vuitton and League of Legends entered a multi-year partnership, which included a custom LV trophy case for the World Championship trophy, in-game customization purchasables, and a League of Legends-inspired LV clothing line. Why does this satisfy the criteria above? 

First, LV created unique products for the League of Legends community, showcasing both their creativity and interactivity. For those who can really afford LV clothing, they had a high-priced, high-fashion clothing line connected with the game that sold out incredibly fast, including a $3,000 watch.

For those who would rather spend $20 and feel like they were repping LV in some way or another, they were able to buy an in-game customization for some of their favorite characters, which added the famous LV symbols to some animations within the game.

To access this partnership, gamers had multiple different points of entry, from the $20 skins to the high-end clothing, it resulted in the creation of never-before-seen assets between League of Legends and Louis Vuitton.  

More recently, we have seen brands like Herman Miller market gamer-focused ergonomic chairs, and pixelated and vibrantly colored gamer shoes by Nike.

At first glance, no one would expect brands like Louis Vuitton or DHL to be connected with the gaming space. But now, through cleverly designed partnerships, LV and DHL have cemented themselves within gaming.

These brands and others have taken the time to rework their marketing strategies and have created unique products, ads, and experiences to appeal to gaming audiences authentically.