As Google pushes to make search and its other platforms the first and last stop to find and buy products, the company on Tuesday announced partnerships with Best Buy, Nike and Sephora just prior to U.S. retailers heading into the end-of-year holiday season.

Best Buy, Nike and Sephora join hundreds of merchants that use Google Shopping Actions to serve product ads across Google Search, Google Assistant, and Google Express, reaching the three-quarters of U.S. holiday shoppers age 18 and older who use three or more channels, according to Google.  

Consumers move from browsing to buying with a universal cart that works across all three platforms whether they’re on mobile, desktop or even a Google Home device, explains Daniel Alegre, president of retail, shopping and payment at Google, in a post.

Sephora allows customers to buy across Google’s properties, as well as earn Beauty Insider points with each purchase as part of the retailer's loyalty program. 

The platform represents a step toward integrating the web, making it easy for consumers to search for and buy products. Google insists that the majority of searches for products and services begin on its platform, but several analyst and data companies have released findings in the past six months that show Google losing search ad budgets to Amazon. For example, about 49% of product searches begin on Amazon, according to Survata.

Citing two media agencies, CNBC reports that in some cases, brands are moving 50% to 60% of their Google Search ad budgets to Amazon.

As CNBC points out, Alphabet has remained somewhat insulated from any threats in terms of losing a large percentage of its ad revenue to competitors, but brands are shifting money to Amazon, and most of the movement is coming from consumer packaged goods.

Telemundo usually broadcasts its programs in Spanish -- but it recently debuted its first entertainment program produced in English and Spanish: “Latinx Now!”

The 30-minute show covers entertainment news stories and celebrity interviews and showcases stars in fashion and culture. It is hosted by noted influencers Christian Acosta, Nastassja Bolivar and Claudia Vergara.

The show’s goal is to provide culture content with crossover appeal, featuring key topics of interest to its youthful Hispanic audience.

A multiplatform partnership of Telemundo, E! and Universo, “Latinx Now!” airs every Wednesday. Celebrities include Luis Fonsi, Becky G, Sofia Carson, Kevin Hart and Leslie Grace.

“Latinx Now!” is available on the Telemundo Entretenimiento YouTube channel and Universo Cable, which run the Spanish-language version every Wednesday at 1 p.m. ET. E! News’ YouTube channel will present the English-language version every Wednesday at 3 p.m.

Viewers can also access Telemundo.com and Universo’s YouTube channel for segments of the show.

Peter Blacker, executive vice president, NBCU Telemundo enterprises revenue strategy and innovation, stated that the project would bring “relevant and engaging content to our GenM (millennial, multicultural, mobile) audience and offer more choice and flexibility.”

“It will become increasingly important to create opportunities for brands to reach their target consumer across our properties,” added Laura Molen, executive vice president, lifestyle-Hispanic advertising sales.

Those consumers are big fans of the show’s hosts.

Christian Acosta has more than 1 million followers on YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. He has been the social media face for various Telemundo properties, including “El Pulso Via Mashable,” “El Buzz Live” and the “Latin Billboard Music Awards.”

TV host and professional model Nastassja Bolivar is also a popular social-media personality across social platforms.

Claudia Vergara has become an influencer for fashion and lifestyle through Instagram, boasting global followers. The niece of the “Modern Family” actress Sofia Vergara, Claudia previously worked in New York for Oscar de la Renta’s fashion house. She has worked and engaged with top consumer brands including Head & Shoulders, Quaker, Avon, Cover Girl and Nike.

Viewers can follow @LatinxNow on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat using #LatinxNow.

Blacker credits “Latinx Now!” with giving bilingual audiences “an experience on the channels of their choice and in their preferred language.”

Separately, Telemundo announced a lineup of performers for the 2018 Latin American Music Awards, including Brazilian superstar Anitta, Frarruko, Mexican pop diva Gloria Trevi and singer/songwriter Joss Favela.

The Latin AMAs will broadcast live from the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, California, on October 25, 8 p.m. ET.

As the LGBTQ community gains more widespread acceptance and recognition, its impact on mainstream society has grown tremendously. 

But with this increasing influence, appropriation is bound to happen — in fact, it’s nearly unavoidable. The question marketers need to ask themselves today:  As brands react to the language and events of the time to stay relevant and profitable, are we paying homage to the creative subcultures that helped develop popular culture as we know it today? 

Many of the terms and colloquialisms used in mainstream society today have their roots in LGBTQ and drag culture. For example, “Yas, queen!” grew out of 1980’s Harlem drag culture to be nearly ubiquitous in today’s lexicon. Or, the term “Okurr,”while popularized by the Kardashians and Cardi B, was actually used in RuPaul’s Drag Race before that and thusbrought into the mainstream.

But while LGBTQ and drag queen culture has an increasing impact on today’s society, it is still widely underrepresented in marketing. 

There are the exceptions, of course. For example, Skyy Vodka recently ran a campaign titled “Proudly American” that tapped drag queen Trixie Mattel and (dreamy) LGBTQ advocate Gus Kenworthy for a widespread program (my company was one of the partners for this campaign). The brand also ran campaigns in support of gay marriage during 2016. 

Here we have a company that recognizes you shouldn’t just profit off your LGBTQ audience — you should authentically represent them in your advertising. So while many brands may find it’s profitable to engage in Pride parades around the country, it’s also ethically responsible for them to take it a step further and include LGBTQ people in their marketing itself.

That, or at least show up more. Here’s another example: I was at RuPaul’s DragCon in New York recently, where I saw a notable absence of big brands. T-Mobile and Anastasia Beverly Hills were present, along with a couple of others, but the event was largely lacking in major advertiser power. 

Why is that? With over 80,000 in attendance between the New York and Los Angeles conventions, and the LGBTQ community coming in with a whopping $917 billion buying power, I’d expect more brands to be actively participating in  LGBTQ community events and culture beyond just the month of June. 

And while there can be political repercussions, research also shows there are benefits for brands beyond LGBTQ audiences. Google research found that over 45% of consumers under 34 years old would repeat business with an LGBTQ-friendly company. Since so many brands are targeting millennial and Gen Z buying power, showing up for LGBTQ events or sponsoring LGBTQ equality seems an easy way to reach that audience. 

And, it’s the right thing to do if brands are going to accept LGBTQ dollars. 

It’s a successful brand’s role to reflect the times and help shape the future. And it’s our job in advertising to ensure we represent the world’s growing diversity in our media plans. 

As LGBTQ issues move forward, and the behaviors and trends that once belonged to that community permeate our mainstream lives, it’s the duty of marketers to push the needle on acceptance and understanding to stay ethical. 

Has there been progress made? Yes, for sure. But to avoid LGBTQ appropriation, there’s much more to be done. 

Moderator 

, Managing Director, Creative Strategy, Daily Dot, Panelists 

, Director of Programming, Rooster Teeth,

, Head of Linear, Tastemade, and 

, CRO, E.W. Scripps

Rubin: Everybody is doing remarkable things in video. More important is to talk about the failure. Pre-roll is going to save us all. Facebook Live is the future. 

Bregman: Past year was the death knell of anybody relying on any third-party platform as your primary means of video distribution. At the end of the day, that platform only has about 45% of their interest in mind. Is there a different way to use this that benefits us holistically. 

Holzer: Not nearly as down on Facebook. Amazing partner for us. Live was something that we overembraced. We were creating things just because we could. It has made us look at Live with critical lens. For us, we like FB, not hug fans of Live, rightfully failed a little bit for them. Twitch embraced community interactivity early on. FB was hard to get on, had to do it from phone. Twitch made it seamless to get on, engage with users. Tastemade has spent 6 years creating TV shows on YouTube and FB, bullish about creating high quality content. Will be launching on all the major platforms in the next six months. 

Rubin: Scripps has massive scale, how much is video a factor in growth?

Sly: We’ve been learning pre-roll is still good. Some of our national brands start ramping up in video, sharing on FB, YT. We found that we couldn’t make it work financially. Once FB algorithms changes, it got difficult. Building a national news network for mature Millennials. All on OTT, 24 platforms, love CPMs on OTT. That’s the niche for us. Premium TV experience that advertisers can broadcast. Works just like TV, more effective than mobile. 

Video belongs everywhere, on your watch, your refrigerator. Content needs to be where everybody wants to consume it. I’m old school. I have Spectrum. I spend 75% of what I watch is OTT. Barely use Spectrum. Maybe catch some morning news.

Rubin: For news, video news, is it monetizing reasonably well?

Sly: P&G will not advertise on hard news. We can sell them lifestyle, weather, no politics, death. Back in the day, always a war on TV, Tide never didn’t buy space. Brands have gotten too, trying to stay away from conflicts. With Newsy, we’re talking straight down the middle, we’re not taking a side. We inform, not influence is our tag line. Advertisers like this. Although it’s a lot easier to built an audience if you take a side, we know that. Most brands are trying to stay neutral, you can’t alienate half the country.

Rubin: What’s it like being swallowed up at Rooster Teeth?

Bregman: Based in Austin, arm’s length from corporate folks. Best thing has been getting more focused. RT tried a little bit of everything, wildly successful. Today, let’s double down on what’s working. Means some future in, much broader potential being part of AT&T, long-term thinking. Now RT can fit that far out is freeing. Being positioned to scale up initiatives. Power of large, traditional media to broaden your efforts that you need at a certain point. 

Rubin: TV too expensive for digital publisher. But you gotta scale down, make something good and cheap, or just cheap. Happy medium?

Bregman: Job to make our core community takes ownership in their role as evangelists. In January, we’re coming out with the first season of “Gen:Lock,” Michael B. Jordan starring in it, we have people who know they helped make this happen. Piece of content, gigantic robots battling in the streets of New York. Broadest audience is on these third-party platforms, the audience of our audience. We start with smaller niche-ish willing to pay upfront for content, see it first, then we broaden assets where monetization gets lower but reach gets bigger. 

Rubin: Video is most effect at getting people down the funnel.

Bregman: We’re selling identity at the end of the day. Like MTV, our relationships with our fans is spectacular.

Rubin: How is Tastemade fostering community?

Holzer: Audience that watches Tastemade on FB, we hope it gets to our TV Experience. Creating content that is bespoke just for that platform. If you’re a fan in one place, we hope you’re a fan in another. It’s an advertising split, YT has access to a piece of our inventory. ESPN on OTT you constantly get the commercials. As platforms mature, have ability to sell, they’ll be national. 

Sly: We can switch between markets. We tell partners this is what you‘re gonna pay. Better than what we’re getting programmatically. We’re learning how to leverage brand sto help each other. Just had first sales summit up in the Catskills, talking about how we can work together, marketing, promotion. Scripps is decent size but nimble enough. 

Bregman: The Catskills?

Sly: Yeah, probably not the best choice but I’m not going to apologize.

Walmart and PayPal are collaborating to jointly provide financial services and products for both companies’ products.

The two companies will roll out PayPal cash in and cash out money services at Walmart for a fee of $3 per service. This is the first time PayPal mobile app users will be able to take cash from their PayPal account at a physical environment, according to the company. Walmart customers also will be able to load cash into their PayPal accounts at Walmart stores.

PayPal Mastercard customers also will be able to access their cash balance using at Walmart service desks, ATMs and cash registers for the same fee.

The video advertising platform Innovid is partnering with the digital marketing firm Jivox on an omni-channel creative optimization tool. 

The solution will include independent ad serving, integrated measurement and dynamic creative decisions. It will work across all channels and devices, from video and display to social, mobile and connected TV.

Specifically, it will enable brands and marketers to “combine the branding and conversion capabilities of video and display across all channels,” the companies say in announcing the tool.

Brands will be able to track the customer journey to buy and optimize their media, including data management and insights.

The companies say the need for such a tool became particularly clear after the implementation of GDPR in Europe.

Online shopping has become more and more popular, and is set to continue its meteoric sales boom; however, consumers are still eager to experience a brand and product in a tactile way. Even in China, where e-commerce giants like Alibaba dominate, physical retail has still proven desirable amongst consumers. Storefront, the world’s largest open share marketplace, acts as the intersection of retail, real estate and consumer needs, making it easy for retailers to create pop-up stores where the primary goal is not simply to sell a brand and its products, but invite consumers to experience the brand, selling consumers on a brand instead.

Storefront CEO and co-founder Mohamed Haouache spoke to PSFK about identifying new ways to experience retail environments and the future of the pop-up space. 

I’m wondering if you can specifically give any details around the virtual reality pop‑up store?

We came up with this idea simply because we believe that there will be what we call a “third universe.” The first one being the physical retail, the second one being the online traditional e-commerce format.

We believe that there is a need for these hybrid formats. The VR pop‑up shop is solving a lot of the limitation of physical or online retail. When we launched this idea, we really thought that it was just a test. We were not sure that there would be a market. We were not even sure that there would be brands willing to pay for that.

What is interesting is that VR pop‑up stores are technically a Shopify, which is merging with Oculus. The VR pop‑up stores of Storefront could theoretically be in the future a Shopify type of interface.

It works quite well with accessories, shoes, or bags. These products tend to be quite successful in some VR pop‑ups. The brand can use this VR pop‑up store link the same way they will advertise the website. For us, it’s an extension of our ecommerce platform for our clients. We are still learning about our clients’ needs.  My real thinking is that in two years, brands will install their VR pop‑up stores the same way they will set up their Shopify accounts.

Is it going to be with Storefront? Maybe. There’s 100% conviction that VR pop‑ups are the future. We call it VR pop‑up, but the truth is, it’s going to be an online portal, which will be in a VR world.

Like you mentioned, it’s just as important to be available on all touch points for the consumer journey, and being where they are.

It’s exactly the case. Keep in mind that a brand, through this format, could theoretically decide that they want to set up their VR pop‑up in a unique universe. It can be Paris, it can be elsewhere.

The message that we are sending today is that short‑term retail is going to be the new long‑term. Our biggest conviction today is that we are going to change the way retail is set up. We’re going to send this message that selling a product, and the cycle of sell, is going to be shorter and shorter in the future, and that we’re going to push the limits of the commercial real estate industry, by pushing them to be more flexible.

Do you think that it encourages more experimentation, just within the retail format, and it gives brands more liberty to create really exciting and innovative experiences for their customers? Would you say that’s a benefit?

Absolutely. That experience is just one angle when you look at short‑term retail. The second one is the financial benefits. You no longer have to commit, and therefore, you don’t have to take a financial risk. The third part is the flexibility to test a product, a new line, a new collection, a new neighborhood, a new environment or even a new color. This can be done because you then have the financial risk of being committed for a long period of time.

It will definitely be really interesting to see where the company heads in the next couple years as these disruptions manifest, and then solidify, too.

There won’t be any commitment in the future. Brands will no longer commit into a long‑term lease, and pop‑up shops are going to be the way of selling products in the future.

A shopping mall company in Europe was telling me six months ago that they believe that by 2030, 50% of their rental fees will come from pop‑up shops. That’s huge, because we believe that today, three to five% of rental fees in shopping malls are acquired from pop‑up shops. From three to five to 50%  in 12 years, it’s going to be a revolution.

Storefront

Capitalizing on the disruption of retail to meet consumers at their new touchpoints is Storefront’s strategy to pioneer the future of the industry. For more examples of how retailers are innovating in a transforming landscape, see PSFK’s reports or newsletters.

For lovers of entertainment news, the future is bright.

Whether it is coverage of the royal family, a new movie, or the personal foibles of a Hollywood superstar, in the coming months consumers will be spoiled for choice, as OTT entertainment coverage picks up in a noticeable way.

While magazines like People and Us Weekly have long dominated the newsstands, and TV shows like “Entertainment Tonight” and “Access Hollywood” have taken viewers behind the scenes for years, streaming video presents new opportunities for consumers to get their Hollywood fix.

Those opportunities are also allowing the new and old world to merge in interesting ways, as two of the biggest bets in streaming entertainment news are coming from People magazine and “Entertainment Tonight.”

At the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s West Coast edition of the Newfronts, Meredith Corp. announced that its PeopleTV OTT network would expand to four live hours per day, starting in early 2019.

Both “People Now” and “Chatter” will be expanded as part of the deal, with additional coverage of red carpets and live events to follow.

Meanwhile, CBS is planning a new streaming network built around the “Entertainment Tonight” franchise. Dubbed ET Live, the service will launch later this year with multiple hours of live coverage each day. The service follows two other free streaming networks from CBS, CBSN, and CBS Sports HQ.

CBSN has become a feather in the cap for the broadcaster, with net programming added regularly. This week the show added a new 7 a.m. hour, putting the streaming news network in more direct competition with the CBS broadcast network, which has “CBS This Morning” starting at the same time.

ET Live is expected to follow the same formula as CBSN and CBS Sports HQ, with hosts discussing the news of the day, but with an entertainment focus.

Both PeopleTV and ET Live are free and ad-supported, with distribution not only through PCs and mobile devices, but on connected TV devices, to better enable background streaming while the viewer goes about their day.

In many ways the promulgation of streaming entertainment news is a fulfillment of the potential of OTT. Niches that were once restricted to a handful of popular magazines, or an hour a day on TV, can be expanded into full-blown multimedia properties. Super-fans that may not be into world news or sports have their own place to turn to bide time.

For marketers, they present new, brand-safe opportunities to reach consumers who may not be watching traditional linear TV. 

Now, the only question is what other genres of programming will be next.

Email is one of the top two channels used by consumers seeking agent-assisted service. But it lags in convenience, according to 2018 Customer Experience Transformation Benchmark, a study by NICE inContact.

It also produces a lower Net Promoter Score than most other channels.

Overall, only 35% are satisfied with their most agent-assisted experience, and 36% with self-service.

NICE inContact surveyed 2,407 people online using a consumer panel.

It found that phone contact with a live rep is utilized by 49% globally, and email by 32%, meaning that consumers initiated contact via these channels. However, email is used more in the UK, and phone and chat in the U.S.

Yet while the phone is the most-used channel in the U.S., it fell from 66% in 2017 to 53% this year. And email grew from 15% to 30% in the U.S. during the same period.

In addition, the phone has a 69% preference rating and email comes in at 58% -- again, the top two channels. Chat is next, with 28% usage and 53% preference.

The picture changes when it comes to effectiveness.

Email draws only a 28% satisfaction level, compared with 44% apiece for mobile apps and online chat. 

Worse, email comes in last in convenience behind automated phone menus and text: The top three are chat, website and phone. Similarly, email is ranked last for resolving issues quickly, and second-to-last for requiring minimal effort 

Moreover, email actually harms the net promoter score, producing an NPS of -9. Mobile apps -- which are used by only 16% -- achieve an NPS of 25,  chat 21 and websites 14. But automated phone menus plunge to a -26.

In general, the study found that 89% are willing to buy from companies that provide exceptional customer service, and 82% will go out of their way to do so. In addition, 83% will recommend such firms. But 80% will switch in response to poor service.

In addition, consumers prefer agent-assisted channels over self-service by more than 2:1.