Google is trying to persuade the European Commission to engage in talks to settle its antitrust investigation of Google’s digital advertising business, according to a Reuters source.

The commission is set to probe whether Google has been limiting third-party access to user data for use in advertising on its sites and apps, while employing the data to its own advantage.

The source “familiar with the matter” declined to provide details, and neither Google or the commission commented on the report.

Three EU antitrust cases over the past decade have already cost Google more than $9 billion in fines.

In hearings in Europe’s second-highest court next week, Google will seek to overturn a record $5.15-billion EU antitrust fine resulting from a 2018 European Commission ruling that it had used its Android mobile operating system to thwart competition.

If Google can reach a settlement in the latest EU probe, it would avoid a fine as well as a finding of wrongdoing, according to Reuters.

However, in the EU’s past three Google cases, antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager chose to levy sanctions rather than negotiate settlements.

If Vestager did agree to settlement talks, that process could take months or years.

In June, Google settled antitrust charges brought by French regulators by agreeing to pay nearly $270 million in fines, stop giving its own services preferential treatment on its advertising platforms, and changing its systems to make it easier for competitors to use its online advertising tools. The company did not admit any wrongdoing.

While the biggest top-of-mind issue should be why pumpkin spice lattes are being sold in 90-degree weather, in reality, it’s winter and the holiday shopping season we must focus on.

Adobe’s Digital Economy Index discovered that consumers spent $844 billion online from March 2020 to February 2021—an amount that equates to a holiday season spend.

Last year, we were cautiously optimistic about retail and spending, given the promise of a vaccine and the world reopening.

This year, with the rise and the spread of multiple variants, we continue to be cautious and optimistic. The difference this time is, brands must be prepared for holiday shopping in all forms: online, retail, via social media shopping channels.

Is your brand game strong in each element? If not, what’s your Plan B? If one doesn’t exist, now is the time to make sure one takes shape.

Here are some ways brands can prepare for a hybrid, multimonth, holiday shopping season.

Social is more than Facebook and Instagram. Facebook and Instagram should remain in your social marketing budget, but it’s time to branch out, especially if your target audience is Gen Z. Consider widening your breadth of social media outlets to reach more consumers.

TikTok, Snapchat, and Pinterest reach a wide audience of varying ages. Snapchat even publishes a yearly “Celebration Cycle” to explain the path to purchase and what products are trending.

Shopper marketers, take note: Entice consumers in-store with codes and promotions that take them online to interact with your brand. Take offline activities online.

Ready for your AR close-up. Is your brand AR-ready? AR (augmented reality) experiences lead to purchases on mobile devices. Consider a holiday campaign that uses AR and ties into the retail experience in-store, which is not going away.

Hybrid shopping is here to stay. The pandemic taught consumers that anything can be purchased online—even groceries! Many consumers will be happy returning to normalcy, which means stepping foot inside a store. Others may feel differently, and prefer to continue down the road of online shopping for anything and everything.

Brands must ensure both advertising strategies are strong, and this may mean divesting some of the marketing budget from one medium to another. Digital may see percentages close to retail’s cut, depending on where infection rates stand. At the end of the day, foot traffic remains high, even when mask mandates are in effect. But be prepared to shift budgets on a moment’s notice if things change.

Just as shopping will remain a hybrid experience, so should your marketing plans. Don’t place all your eggs on in-store or all digital. Connect with shoppers in as many places as possible.

Go big or go home. Consumers aren’t cutting back on spending; quite the opposite. It’s the way these purchases are made that’s ever-changing.

Expect this holiday season to be big on spending. Consumers plan to go all out to make up for the Zoom holiday season most families had last year.

Brands must do the same. Offer deals before Black Friday, for consumers looking to shop early. Ensure that your brand’s digital presence is seamless and up to date. If more than half of holiday purchases are online, make sure your website and supply chain are ready for the influx of traffic.

How is your company readying for the influx of sales this holiday season?

Simpli.fi added CTV Retargeting this week, expanding its Performance CTV offering and its focus on programmatic advertising and agency management software.

This latest capability enables advertisers to retarget consumers who were previously served a CTV impression with a variety of ad types. The idea is to drive higher performance at a lower average cost.

“We take users who have been exposed to a connected TV ad and build an audience around it,” said Ryan Horn, senior vice president of marketing at Simpli.fi. “It gives our advertisers the ability to retarget the consumer with a different creative ad like display or video or mobile, for a slightly lower cost.”

The data used to target the ad can include addressable, behavioral, and first-party data. Horn said if someone watches a connected TV show and ad space became available at auction, Simpli.fi would bid on the ad space using all the available data.

The number of connected TV devices in U.S. households has grown significantly over the past year. About 82% of U.S. TV households have at least one connected TV device.

In 2021, Simpli.fi has run more than 32,000 CTV campaigns for about 8,200 unique advertisers.

The data also suggests that 60% of adults watch video via a connected TV device at least weekly in 2021 -- up from 59% in 2020, 52% in 2019, 40% in 2016, and 10% in 2011.

Retargeting is not new for Simpli.fi. The company got its start in search retargeting, with the ability to serve ads online based on keyword data from search to contextual. That expanded into geolocation, addressable and household-level targeting.

Simpli.fi can use search targeting to find the appropriate audience for the CTV ad.

If someone searches on a specific keyword or for a specific product, the company would target the CTV ad toward a specific advertiser. The company’s cross-device graph makes it possible to pair the correct consumers with the brand.

Horn expects many more advancements in CTV, especially around attribution and targeting.

Alaska Airlines has signed on for a new service from Airship that helps marketers drive and automate opt-ins on mobile after Apple’s rollout of iOS !5 and Android 12 and the Mail Privacy Protection (MPP) on Monday.    

The new phones provide consumers with more control over when and how they get notifications and alerts from apps.

Airship’s marketer-friendly Preference Center enables users to create and manage customers’ opt-in choices without ongoing developer support or app updates to the App Store or Google Play, the company claims.

Integrated within Airship’s SaaS Customer Engagement Platform, the Preference Center allows marketers to guide consumers to their preference center through contextually triggered in-app messages or cross-channel journeys for onboarding, loyalty enrollment and opting in for new subscription content, the company says. 

In addition, marketers can automatically combine opt-in selections with customers’ mobile behaviors for hyper-personalized messaging, it adds.

They also can track list opt-ins, review analytics reports and create multiple subscription lists spanning popular topics, all without developer support.  

While not a first for email or SMS, the service is a new one for app messaging, the company says. 

Alaska Airlines reportedly is one of several name brands on board with the service.  

“As pandemic restrictions lift and broad-scale travel resumes it’s absolutely vital that we connect our customers to the best values and broader inspiration to satisfy pent-up wanderlust,” says Dave McCormick, managing director, product & design for Alaska Airlines. 

McCormick adds: “Airship’s Preference Center will provide an easy and efficient way to ensure marketing messages do not diminish the role our mobile app plays as a real-time travel companion, notifying customers of when they can check-in or if there happens to be a gate change.”

Apple’s new MPP will prevent marketers from using invisible pixels to collect open-rate and geographical-location information about their recipients.

It is not known how many consumers will opt in to this service. Roughly 35% to 40% of email subscribers open their mail through Apple clients.

Despite the mobile revolution, many marketers have remained hesitant about using the text-message/SMS marketing channel. 

Even with business use of text messaging having grown 20% as a result of the pandemic, just 3% of registered businesses worldwide are using it to communicate and transact with consumers, according to Mobilesquared data. 

Just 14% of companies currently text with consumers, and 65% of brands still don’t have a formal text-marketing strategy, according to stats from various industry surveys gathered by SlickText. 

“That’s surprising, given text messaging’s natural fit for business-to-consumer communications,” says Chuck Moxley, VP of marketing for text messaging platform Mobivity. 

As a native installation on mobile phones, text-messaging apps offer potential reach to massive universes: 292 million people in North America and 5 billion globally use texting (80% and 65% of those populations, respectively). 

SMS apps are also used more often than any other app (most apps are abandoned within 90 days of being downloaded), points out Moxley. 

As Gartner has noted, various sources report SMS open and response rates as high as 98% and 45%, respectively — in contrast to corresponding figures of 20% and 6% for email.

Numerous surveys have found large percentages of consumers reporting that they want to text with their favorite brands to get updates and receive promotional offers, and use texting for customer service issues and functions like making reservations. 

Texting can be particularly effective for ecommerce offers. “On major shopping days like Black Friday and Cyber Monday, when nearly every ecommerce business is promoting discounts, texting can be used to cut through the noise and give your customers the opportunity to claim a discount, and make a purchase, almost instantaneously,” says Moxley.

Brick-and-mortar brands that have integrated text messaging in their technology stacks are finding that the two-way communication greatly improves the online ordering and pickup experiences, he reports. 

And consumers are far more likely to opt in (via a simple five-digit shortcode) for promotions via text than email and other channels. Brands can confirm opt-in with users to guard against accusations of spamming, and a brand’s texting platform can be integrated with point-of-sale, loyalty, email and social media efforts to ensure marketing and fulfillment campaigns are personalized and integrated for the best consumer experience. 

Other recent survey findings cited by SlickText: 64% of consumers think companies who text value their time, are progressive and would recommend them to others; 53% say they feel more positive toward a brand that uses mobile messaging to communicate; and 45% say the ability to send mobile messages is what could convince them to choose one brand, product or service over another.

So what’s been preventing a much more robust uptake of SMS marketing to date?

Although it’s bottom-line results that matter, cost is always a key factor, and SMS campaigns “are significantly more costly than email campaigns on a per-message basis because all the messages must flow through mobile operators that charge a premium,” according to Gartner.

SMS marketers must also be vigilant about adhering to both the Telephone Protection Act (TCPA) and the CAN-SPAM Act. In combination, those require obtaining explicit written consent/opt-in from each individual before sending texts (just providing a phone number doesn’t count), easy access to program terms and conditions, and simple opt-out mechanisms.

To ensure a positive rather than alienating experience, marketers also need to determine the types of content and frequencies desired by different customer demographics, and deliver those in practice. SMS marketing requires having or tapping into expertise and attention to detail, in other words.

But this channel is looking more attractive than ever these days, for at last two big reasons.

One is the pandemic’s acceleration of consumers’ already rapidly growing embrace of ecommerce.

The other is marketers’ pressing need to gather and leverage first-party data, with Apple’s mandatory opt-in for tracking iOS users across apps and sites kicking in, and Google’s ending its support for cookies further off now, but still looming.

Data collected through explicit upfront consent and ongoing interaction via the under-used SMS channel could be one efficient route to building an engaged first-party digital audience.

Netflix has begun rolling out its first free service plan for mobile phones — an ad-free plan that’s limited to Kenya, at least for the present.

Netflix has previously offered free trials and limited content in various international markets as a sampling method to drive conversions to its paid plans, but the mobile-only plan is a new variation.

The plan gives users access to about a quarter of Netflix’s content catalog. The rest of the library is locked, but can be browsed. Free mobile users can’t cast content to TV screens or download content for offline viewing.

To access the service, users need only provide an email and a password, and verify that they are 18 or older.

“If you’ve never watched Netflix before — and many people in Kenya haven’t — this is a great way to experience our service,” Cathy Conk, Netflix director of product innovation, wrote in a blog post. “And if you like what you see, it’s easy to upgrade to one of our paid plans so you can enjoy our full catalog on your TV or laptop as well.”

Continued international expansion has become Netflix’s core growth-driver as subscriber growth has slowed in the saturated U.S. market.