Consumers cherish loyalty programs, and they like the personalized emails that promote them. But many receive too many irrelevant messages, judging by the 2024 Consumer Trends Index, a study from Marigold in conjunction with Econsultancy.  

Of the U.S. shoppers polled, 78% will pay more to buy from the brands they are loyal to, up from 72% in the prior year.

Email beats social media, but just barely. 

Overall, 51% of consumers have made a purchase from an email in the past year, beating social media (50%), post (49%), SSM/MMS message (30%) and banner ads (21%). 

The study notes that “advancements in technology have elevated email’s ability to deliver hyper-relevant, masterfully segmented messages that resonate with consumers on an individual level. “

Email is most popular with Boomers—59% have purchased via the channel in the last 12 months before the survey. In contrast, 53% of millennials have done so, along with 44% of Gen X and 42% of Gen Z. 

However, many consumers have been frustrated in their dealing with brands. They say they have received:

• Irrelevant content or offers—48%
• Messages that didn’t reflect my wants and needs—48%
• Messaging based on information about me that I hadn’t shared directly with the brand—37%
• Email sent at a time when I wasn’t likely to see it—32%

Not to worry: shoppers are likely to engage with these types of brand messages:

• Discounts and coupon codes—89%
• Loyalty program promotions—88%
• Sale promotions or holiday promotions—88%
• Exclusive VIP offers—85%
• Personalized emails that surprise you with offers tailored to your interests—84%
• Product announcements—82%
• Brand purpose-related activities—70%
• Newsletters—67%

Despite the fact that they are less likely to buy via email, 89% of Gen X likes personalized emails that surprise them. So do 83% of Boomers, 87% of Millennials and 73% of Gen X. 

Want to inspire brand loyalty? Consumers say their favorite brand: 

• Provides a consistent experience regardless of where I interact with it—95%
• Uses my data in a way that makes me feel comfortable—92%
• Rewards my loyalty—91%
• Treats me like an individual—91%
• Strives to develop a relationship—89%
• Makes me feel special, like a VIP—88%
• Surprises me with rewards I don’t expect—84%
• Influences my life beyond the products and services that it provides—81%

In addition, consumers say these factors are important or critically so in keeping them loyal to a brand:

• Customer service/support—82%
• Range of options/product choice—82%
• Availability offline/in-store—81%
• Data privacy policies—80%
• Quality of product or services—79%
• Loyalty programs—73%
• Mobile app/website—71%
• They work hard to build a relationship with me—65%
• Brand purpose—62%

On a separate note, 50% of consumers overall are optimistic about the economy. 

Millennials are most positive about the rising cost of living (64%), their overall job security (67%), the economic outlook (65%) and their financial situation (69%). 

Gen Z runs second, and Boomers last—65% of Boomers are pessimistic about the rising cost of living and 56% about the economic outlook, exceeding all other generations. 

Marigold, in conjunction with Econsultancy, surveyed 1,012 U.S. consumers from September-November 2023. 

Reddit, the forum-style social-media platform, filed to go public on Thursday after existing for over two decades.

The company, which has been a leading IPO candidate for over two years, finished 2023 with a faster growth rate than other apps like Snapchat and Pinterest, with ad revenue up more than 20%, but reported a net loss of $90.8 million, which could limit its potential valuation when it eventually lists its shares.

Reddit first submitted a draft registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission to go public in December 2021, around the time the company landed a $410 million funding round led by Fidelity, valuing the company at around $10 billion.

The next month, Reddit considered a valuation of $15 billion, continuing confidently with its plans by getting Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs to work on the listing. However, in May 2023, Fidelity slashed its valuation of Reddit to $5.5 billion, after a difficult and controversial year for the platform.

The platform has also faced controversy over the past year, as Redditors continue to use the platform to spread misinformation and harass other users, while the company itself attracted mass protest from users when it announced plans to charge for its API, leading to beloved third-party apps being shut down.

Despite being one of the most-visited websites in the US, with over 500 million visitors in December 2023 and an average of 73.1 million daily active unique users globally in the last three months of 2023, Reddit has failed to build its online advertising business as much as rival social-media giants like Facebook parent Meta and Google parent Alphabet.

However, the company wants to turn its user growth into advertiser revenue growth, offering an ambitious estimate that by 2027 the total market globally from advertising -- specifically in regards to desktop and mobile web, display, search advertising and video and social direct-response ads, excluding China and Russia -- will reach $1.4 trillion, compared to the current number of $1 trillion.

Reddit will offer three classes of stock with different voting shares. Class A stock will come with one vote per share. Class B shares will come with 10 votes per share and can be converted at any time into one share of Class A stock. Class C shares will have no voting rights.

In a move typically reserved for larger investors, Reddit reportedly plans to reserve an undetermined number of shares for 75,000 of its users, who will be given the chance to collect shares of Reddit at its IPO price before the stock begins trading.

Continuing its privacy crackdown, the Federal Trade Commission said Thursday that security company Avast had agreed to pay $16.5 million for allegedly providing consumers' web browsing data to outside companies, including Omnicom, Lotame and LiveRamp.

“While the FTC’s privacy lawsuits routinely take on firms that misrepresent their data practices, Avast’s decision to expressly market its products as safeguarding people’s browsing records and protecting data from tracking only to then sell those records is especially galling,” Chair Lina Khan said Thursday in a statement joined by Commissioners Rebecca Kelly Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya.

Avast, which offered free malware protection, allegedly “collected highly detailed browsing data from millions of users and then, through its subsidiary Jumpshot, sold those browsing records to over a hundred clients, including major advertising firms,” the commissioners stated.

“Avast also released this data in individualized, re-identifiable form, allowing these browsing histories to be traced back to specific people -- in direct contravention of what Avast had promised,” Khan and the others added.

In addition to the fine, the settlement agreement bans Avast from selling browsing data for ad purposes, and requires it to delete any products or algorithms derived from that data.

The U.K.-based Avast stated Thursday that it disagrees with the FTC's “allegation and characterization of the facts.”

The company added that it “voluntarily” closed Jumpshot in 2020.

Privacy advocate John Davisson, director of litigation at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, cheered news of the FTC's complaint.

“We're very pleased to see this case,” he says. “It's important as an enforcement action on its own merits, and hopefully as a precedent for future action around online data.”

The FTC's privacy charges against Avast follow enforcement actions against mobile data brokers including Kochava, Outlogic (formerly X-Mode), and InMarket Media, as well as cases against online therapy service BetterHelp and prescription discounter GoodRx.

In Avast's case, allegations that the company sold consumers' clickstream data appear to have first surfaced in December 2019, prompting Mozilla to temporarily remove Avast's extensions from Firefox's add-ons site.

At around that same time, Senator Ron Wyden (R-Oregon) questioned the company over its practices.

The FTC says after it issued Avast a demand for information, the company announced in a January 30, 2020 blog post that it was winding down Jumpshot.

The FTC's complaint alleges that between 2014 and 2020 Avast's Jumpshot subsidiary gathered users' web browsing data from software and downloadable extensions, and sold that information in non-aggregated form to outside companies.

“Many of the Jumpshot products (or 'data feeds') provided third-party data buyers with extraordinary detail regarding how consumers navigated the Internet, including each webpage visited, precise timestamp, the type of device and browser, and the city, state, and country,” the complaint alleged. “Most of the data feeds included a unique and persistent device identifier associated with each particular browser ('Jumpshot GUID'), allowing Jumpshot and the third-party buyer to trace individuals across multiple domains over time.”

The FTC also says Avast's privacy policies -- which were revised several times between 2014 and 2020 -- misrepresented its practices.

For instance, the complaint alleges that prior to October 2018, Avast said in its privacy policy that the company only collected web browsing data to identify the source of a malware infection, and that it collected “no more information than is required in order to provide full functionality.”

“The vast majority of consumers would not know that the Avast software would surveil their every move on the internet or that their browsing information might be sold to more than 100 third parties and stored indefinitely, in granular, re-identifiable form,” the FTC wrote.

The FTC adds that clickstream data -- at least when re-identifiable -- is “sensitive data.”

Browsing information reveals “consumers’ religious beliefs, health concerns, political leanings, location, financial status, visits to child-directed content, and interest in prurient content,” the complaint alleges.

The complaint also includes specific allegations regarding Avast's contracts with LiveRamp, Lotame and Omnicom. 

For instance, between May 2017 and April 2019, Avast's Jumpshot gave LiveRamp a license “to use consumers’ granular browsing information, including all clicks, timestamps, persistent identifiers, and cookie values,” for ad targeting, among other purposes, according to the FTC.

Jumpshot's contract with Lotame allegedly allowed it to combine its data with Jumpshot's for ad targeting.

“The parties agreed that Jumpshot would receive a share of the revenue that Lotame earned through the targeting of consumer audiences made up of, or derived from, browsing information held by Jumpshot,” the FTC alleged.

Avast's contract with Omnicom allegedly called for Jumpshot to provide Omnicom with an “all clicks feed” for 50% of customers in the United States, United Kingdom, Mexico, Australia, Canada, and Germany.

That contract allowed Omnicom to “map out/translate” Jumpshot's user identifiers with identifiers created by the data broker Neustar, and to “match with LiveRamp,” according to the complaint.

Those terms allegedly let Omnicom associate Avast's data “with other sources of data, on an individual user basis," and also allowed Omnicom to “'transmit, market and sublicense' to its own customers products derived from the raw data."

“The production fee schedule stated in the first work order to the contract was approximately $2 million per year,” the FTC alleged.

The FTC hasn't accused LiveRamp, Lotame or Omnicom of wrongdoing. Those companies haven't yet responded to MediaPost's request for comment.

Two important headlines from MediaPost this week: “Total TV Viewing Hits 4-Year High In January” and “Linear TV 'Down, Streaming 'Flat To Slightly Up': Analyst.”

Let’s look at them one at a time. The first story reported the latest Nielsen numbers for combined linear and streaming TV that showed “total TV viewing [in the U.S.] climbed to a four-year high in January of 2024, with usage up 3.7% from December in total day viewing for persons two years of age and up.”

Total TV viewing in the U.S hit a record level!

The second reported analysis from Bernstein Research predicted that U.S. media spend on linear TV would go down along with viewing declines, that spend on streaming TV would be flat to growing -- with much depending on the cost per thousands that Amazon can command for advertising in Prime Video, which has historically been ad-free.

Basically, linear TV ad spend is going down and streaming is largely going up, constrained at this point not by content viewing, but availability of advertising, since so much of it has historically been ad-free or ad-light.

Net, net, overall TV ad spend in the U.S. is growing, following audience, ad load and pricing!

At what point will we stop talking about streaming versus linear TV as if they're fighters in a heavyweight championship fight?

Viewers don’t care. To them, it’s just TV. For the most part, advertisers don’t (or shouldn’t care). It’s just about audience, content, ad capabilities and outcomes.

Don’t blame the headline writers. The stories and headlines are written this way because it's the way our industry continues to organize and operate. Our industry lives in silos. We love silos.

So many of our TV companies -- buyers, sellers, enablers -- are still fundamentally organized around the delivery method of the TV signal: digital, linear (broad, cable, satellite). And that siloing extends to language, terminology and acronyms. Most of our streaming TV folks can’t speak linear (Fringe, CPP, P2+, etc.). And most of our linear folks can’t speak digital (Outstream, PMP, RTB, etc.).

We need to move on now. Most advertisers looking to TV for efficient, predictable consumer growth need audiences that are present and accessible on both streaming and linear. And, for those buying on both today, they’d like to have a lot less wasted frequency.

Our viewers would greatly appreciate better integration of ad experiences between streaming and linear, and among the various streaming providers. They’d like to have a lot less ad frequency of the annoying ads.

And yes, dealing with non-TV devices differently (PC, mobile, game device) will have to be addressed soon. Not all are primary-screen, high-engagement experiences. But, for now, let’s treat streaming and linear together. Please.

What do you think? Isn’t it time to move on, and treat everything on TV like TV?

Thanks Kirk McDonald, for the inspiration here! You’ve been fighting this battle longer than any of us.

Following its public launch, decentralized microblogging app Bluesky is allowing any user to run their own server on the platform's network, a concept referred to as federation.

By opening up federation, Bluesky users will now have the ability to host their own account, their own data and create their own rules and guidelines surrounding content and membership.

Funded by ex-Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and run by software engineer Jay Graber, Bluesky operates on the idea that social-media users should be able to curate their own specific experiences separate from the influence of algorithms and moderation settings, which users can also set themselves.

During Super Bowl LVIII, Bluesky gave users the option to view the game's highlights without any mention of pop megastar Taylor Swift, showcasing the endless possibilities users will find on Bluesky's decentralized protocol. The AT Protocol aims to give users and developers an added layer of transparency into how the platform is being created.

Two weeks after leaving a private beta mode and opening to public use, the platform amassed millions of new users, now up to about 5 million registered users. With federation, Bluesky will have a better chance at competing against decentralized rival app Mastodon and, eventually, Meta’s app Threads, which is preparing to join the ActivityPub protocol sometime soon.

In the near future, federation could prove to be a popular option for social media users who want to utilize niche communities or who desire more control over their personal data. Bluesky is the only decentralized platform currently using the AT Protocol, which could limit future possibilities for interoperability between platforms –– a goal for Threads and Mastodon.

Bluesky says it differs from Mastodon in other ways as well, including custom feeds and composable moderation -- which means moderation options exist in the hands of each individual user rather than being tied to a specific server.

So regardless of how server operators run their communities, users can set their own moderation preferences in order to have the ideal experience for them.

“There are some guardrails in place to ensure we can keep the network running smoothly for everyone in the ecosystem,” Bluesky said in a blog post. “After this initial phase, we'll open up federation to people looking to run larger servers with many users.”

Food delivery service DoorDash has agreed to pay $375,000 to settle allegations that it violated California privacy laws by “selling” consumers' data to a marketing co-op, without giving consumers the opportunity to opt out, state Attorney General Rob Bonta said this week.

The delivery company allegedly shared customer data in January 2020 with a marketing co-op -- meaning a collection of businesses that pooled information about customers for marketing purposes.

Bonta's office says DoorDash's participation in the co-op violated the California Consumer Privacy Act because the company didn't disclose the data transfers in a privacy policy, and didn't post “an easy-to-find 'Do Not Sell My Personal Information' link” on its website or mobile app.

California's 2018 privacy law prohibits companies from “selling” residents' personal information without allowing them to opt out.

The complaint against DoorDash, filed Wednesday in Los Angeles Superior Court, alleges that California's privacy law defines “sale” broadly enough to cover DoorDash's alleged data transfers.

“Any transaction under which a business receives a benefit for sharing consumer information can be a sale” under the California Consumer Privacy Act, the complaint alleges. “DoorDash traded consumer personal information in exchange for the benefit of advertising to potential new customers; its participation in the marketing co-op was therefore a sale.”

DoorDash stated this week that it ended its relationship with marketing co-ops in 2020, and that the settlement stems from “a single incident involving a vendor over four years ago.”

Bonta's office alleges that even though DoorDash doesn't currently sell customers' information, the company did not “cure” the January 2020 sale to the co-op.

“DoorDash did not cure because it did not make affected consumers whole by restoring them to the same position they would have been in if their data had never been sold,” the complaint alleges.

“The consumer personal information and inferences about DoorDash’s customers had already been sold downstream to other companies and beyond the marketing co-op’s members, including to a data broker that re-sold the data many times over,” the attorney general's office writes.

“DoorDash also could not determine which downstream companies had received its data so that it could contact each company to request that it delete or stop further selling the data,” Bonta's office adds.

The settlement hasn't yet been approved by a judge.

Many consumers woke up to “SOS” on their cell phones Thursday morning, an indication that cellular service is not available.

While some reports say it’s a nationwide AT&T issue, other news sources indicate that other carriers are also affected, and also the nationwide communication network that pharmacies use when filling prescriptions and other health care communication systems is down. 

AT&T, the nation’s largest carrier, has more than 240 million subscribers, according to Yahoo News, which reported late morning that AT&T says 75% of network is restored.

Verizon and T-Mobile customers were also affected, according to Fox Business. Downdetector is a website that crowdsources "realtime overview of issues and outages with all kinds of services."

Downdetector also showed a spike in reported T-Mobile outages around 4 a.m. ET, per Fox Business. “A T-Mobile spokesperson told Fox Business they did not experience an outage and that their network is operating normally.”

The federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency is “working closely with AT&T to understand the cause of the outage and its impacts, and stand[s] ready to offer any assistance needed,” Eric Goldstein, the agency’s executive assistant director for cybersecurity, said in a statement to CNN.

While service was being restored on Thursday, cell users were instructed in how to enable Wi-Fi calling so as to still be able to make phone calls. 

“Wi-Fi calling is a feature that allows users to make or receive phone calls as long as they have a Wi-Fi connection,” according to the Pensacola News Journal. “The feature is available on both Apple and Android devices.”

Some point to two very strong solar flares overnight as a possible reason for the problems. Anecdotally, some say only the primary cellular account user is without service while those on the family plan are not experiencing outages. 

NASA reports that the sun emitted two strong solar flares, the first one peaking at 6:07 p.m. EST on Feb. 21, and the second peaking at 1:32 a.m. EST on Feb. 22. 

According to Space.com, a major solar flare interrupted AT&T service on Aug. 4, 1972. Long-distance phone communication was knocked out across several states. 

AT&T has not confirmed that their outage is related to a solar flare, according to Fox 35 Orlando.

"Some people are attributing cell network outages (AT&T, Verizon) in the U.S to last night’s X-class #SolarFlare," Ryan French of the National Solar Observatory posted on X. "However, flares only cause radio degradation on the ‘dayside’ of the Earth.”

Probably unrelated to the cellular disturbance but notable, U.S. healthcare technology giant Change Healthcare has confirmed a cyberattack on its systems, according to Tech Crunch. In a brief statement Wednesday, the company said it was “experiencing a network interruption related to a cyber security issue.”

Pharmacies across the country have put out notices that the attack on Change Healthcare is disrupting their ability to process patients' orders, according to Fox Business. 

Change Healthcare disconnected its systems to prevent further impact as a result of an ongoing “cybersecurity issue,” reports HealthITSecurity.com.

Change Healthcare is part of health tech company Optum, which is owned by healthcare giant UnitedHealth Group as of 2022. Through its platform, Change processes patient payments for healthcare organizations across the country, per HealthITSecurity.com.

Pinterest’s latest ad campaign running on social-media platforms such as LinkedIn explains how advertisers can easily turn its nearly half a billion people who search monthly for things into buyers.

The ad campaign, titled The P is for Performance, recreates scenes from action-based movies such as "Indiana Jones" using an old-school, Alfred Hitchcock rear projection style of filmmaking.  

“It’s a literal takedown of doing something high-performance,” said Xanthe Wells, vice president of global creative at Pinterest, who joined the company in 2022, and then built its internal creative team, similar to the way she built Google’s team.

Directed by Tim Godsall and supported by voice actor Corey Burton, the four creatives feature two over-the-top heroines dodging dangers while discussing how advertisers crave a performance-based platform that can increase conversion rates and traffic.

The spots titled "Car Chase," "Snowmobile," "Train" and "Volcano" will run through April 30 across paid social, search, programmatic and trade publication channels in the U.S., U.K., and AU before entering other markets worldwide later this year.

One spot takes a cue from an Indiana Jones film, where a woman wearing a classic fedora asks another who squats and balances beside on top of a moving train: “My dear, do you think those three tunnels are a metaphor for the way marketers feel beholden to a duopoly when it comes to lower-funnel ad spend?”

When Wells arrived at Pinterest, she set the same goal as when she worked at Google -- to establish an internal creative team. “We named it The House of Creative," she said. "Now we do nearly all our work internally without agencies.”

Pinterest does work with agencies Amplify and Mint, but for the most time the internal team conceptualizes and creates the major campaigns.

Performance products emphasized in the campaign include mobile deep links that allow merchants to direct people to a specific page on their app, and direct links that take consumers to an advertiser's product page in one click.

It also highlights an API for conversions that allows advertisers to send conversions to Pinterest via a secure server-to-server connection, and shopping ads to help brands engage with their customers.

B2B is one audience, but Gen Z is another. Wells said in April that the company will sponsor the Coachella Music Festival to reach a different type of audience.

Gen Z is Pinterest’s fastest-growing audience, with a growth rate of 20% year-over-year (YoY) compared with 8% of its user base.

Each year, hundreds of thousands of people head to Coachella not just to listen to music, but also to express themselves. Many come to Pinterest to plan for that reveal. Last year, Pinterest searches for “Coachella outfit inspo” increased by 1,100% compared with the previous year.

Brands worldwide are pouring money into data, and getting increasingly astute about how to use it, judging by Demystifying the Data Layer: Transformation of Marketing Data Infrastructure," a white paper released Wednesday by Winterberry Group.  

This year alone, $27 billion worldwide will be spent on data, data services and infrastructure -- and that total is expected to rise by 8% to $33 billion by 2027, according to the report.  

In 2024, that investment will support $270 billion in U.S. media buying across data-driven channels, up from $85.7 million in 2004 and $174.4 million in 2018. 

However, it could be that spending on data infrastructure has slowed down in the U.S. because firms have already made these investments. While 74% are increasing their spend on data infrastructure, only 19% are significantly increasing it.

In contrast, 60% foresee major increases in the U.K. and 35% in the EU.

Similarly, only 27% are greatly increasing their spending on data services, while 67% are hiking it to some degree. In the U.K., 56% are significantly boosting their spend and 39% in the EU. 

Whatever the spend, marketers admit they face several challenges when deploying data, including:  

• Data Accuracy and Quality — 50% 
• Security — 41%
• Cost/Pricing—41%
• Privacy Regulation — 37% 
• Compliance — 28% 
• Data Solution Architecture Design — 27%
• Integration Complexity — 27% 
• Scale/Volume of Data — 19%
• Limited Talent/In-House Expertise — 17% 
• Vendor Selection and Management — 14% 

Privacy compliant first-party data now dominates, judging by usage:

• First-Party data — 87% 
• Second-Party — 41%
• Third-Party — 45% 

And email reigns supreme. Data has been leveraged to support these channels over the past 1-3 years:

• Email — 63% 
• Paid Social — 59% 
• Direct Mail — 54% 
• Display and Video — 44%
• Connected TV (CTV. OTT, Addressable) — 42% 
• SMS/Mobile Push — 38% 

Here are the solutions being used to store, manage and analyze data: 

• Engagement Marketing Platform (CRM) — 83% 
• Customer Data Platform — 59%
• Data Warehouse/Data Lake — 57% 
• Collaborative Data Environment/Clean Room — 47% 
• Analytic Data Environment — 39% 
• Identity Graph — 35% 

Where do they store their data warehouses or data lakes? They utilize:

• Hybrid (on-premise and on-cloud) — 56% 
• On-premise — 32% 
• On-cloud — 12% 

To hear Winterberry tell it, there are three data levels in the marketing/advertising ecosystem:  

1. Data Layer — Data is ingested, consolidated and standardized for analysis and activation 
2. Intelligence Layer — Data is leveraged to derive insights and inform decisioning related use cases
3. Activation Layer — Applications and platforms are used to communicate across outbound and inbound channels.  

“Several market forces are transforming how enterprises responsibly collect and use data for marketing activation,” concludes Michael Harrison, managing partner, Winterberry Group, and a co-author of the research.  

Harrison continues, “Increased privacy regulation, a rapid shift toward digital-centric performance media, and the evolution of tech driven by machine and learning and generative AI [artificial intelligence] are helping to build a centralized data infrastructure that can support many business use cases – involving insights, activation, optimization and measurement. We’re seeing brands and companies embracing this layer as foundational.” 

Winterberry Group surveyed 200 respondents in the United States, United Kingdom, France and Germany and interviewed more than 60 marketers from October 2023 to February 2024.