What would it take for people to switch and pay for a search services through a subscription service, rather than data? Google search is used by 87% of computers, with mobile market share of about 94% as of June 2021, according to Statista. There are other options for consumers.

Neeva, an ad-free private subscription search engine founded by former Google executive Sridhar Ramaswamy, became available this week as an integrated search option in Vivaldi, a private and customizable web browser. Is there any opportunity for brands in a subscription-based search engine? The answer is pretty obvious: only if there is a sponsorship offering.

Search results on Neeva do not serve up ads or affiliate links. Neeva runs on a subscription model, making the engine accountable to their users, not advertisers. 

While some may balk at the idea of paying for queries on a search engine, the truth is consumers have always paid with their attention, clicks, and private data.

Neeva’s subscription model works to deliver an experience without relying on advertising revenue or selling customer profile data.

Agencies like Aimclear are trying to determine how. “It’s another search engine that promises not to track you,” said Marty Weintraub, founder of Aimclear. “Chrome is a lot more than a browser. It’s a tracking mechanism. It’s a privacy busting beast. Most Americans don’t seem to care that much.”

Jonathan Kagan, vice president at search agency 9Rooftops, pointed out that Margo Georgiadis, Endurance Partner in residence at General Catalyst, and former CEO at Ancestry and Mattel, as well as former president at Google, sits on Neeva’s advisory board.

She believes it’s time for the “next evolution of search.”

Vivaldi is not the only search option in Neeva.

The Puma web browser in June also integrated Neeva.  Yuriy Dybskiy is CEO and co-founder of Puma Browser, a web browser with micropayments built in. The company enables payments for creators, app and game developers via Coil and ILP protocol, with access to Ethereum Name Service and Handshake domains.

He previously worked with Lyft, Facebook Parse, Meteor, IBM Cloudant, and a few others.

Other privacy engines that do not charge include DuckDuck Go, and StartPage.

With third-party data increasingly being cut off, 85% of publishers say first-party (IP) data — based on consumer actions — will be important to their future revenue, according to a new study by ad technology provider OpenX. 

However, they face challenges in using 1P data. For example, while 66% use 1P data to drive ad revenue, only 53% say it is now important to their ad sales. And only 21% feel it is “very important,” although 50% expect it to move into that category going forward. 

Part of the problem is a lack of current solutions for activating the data. The average score for 1P data tools, on a scale of 1 to 10, is 6.5. Only 7% of respondents are “very satisfied” with their existing tools. 

Larger publishers are slightly less likely to use 1P data, but are more likely to derive value from it. Of those polled, 63% of publishers with more than 500 million monthly requests are now using 1P data, versus 71% of publishers with less than 500 million. Yet the larger firms are 35% more likely to say that 1P data significantly affects their revenue. 

Smaller publications have one major problem that dwarfs everything else: 82% say finding interested advertisers is one of their top two hurdles. Only 49% of larger publishers say so.

PMPs are the preferred mechanism for using 1P data — 80% use them. But 48% also use open auction to monetize 1P data.  

"Legacy identifiers, such as third-party cookies and IDFA, are still on their way out,” states Tom Levesque, vice president, product at OpenX. “Publishers have smartly recognized that first party data will fill a large part of the gap.” 

But Levesque adds: “There's a clear need for ad tech vendors to support this transition with better first party solutions for publishers."

OpenX surveyed 123 respondents across direct publishers, networks and sales houses, in July 2021. Of those surveyed, 60% have over 500 million ad requests a month. The publishers cover desktop (94%), mobile apps (55%) and CTV (18%).  

Developers of health apps should notify consumers about privacy breaches -- including unauthorized disclosures of their identifiable health information -- the agency said Wednesday in a new policy statement.

The FTC voted 3-2 to approve the policy statement, with the two Republican commissioners dissenting.

Apps “are routinely caught playing fast and loose with user data, leaving users’ sensitive health information susceptible to hacks and breaches,” FTC Chair Lina Khan stated Wednesday. “Given the rising prevalence of these practices, it is critical that the FTC use its full set of tools to protect Americans.”

The policy statement specifically provides that app developers must notify consumers about more than “cybersecurity intrusions or nefarious behavior.”

“Incidents of unauthorized access, including sharing of covered information without an individual’s authorization, triggers notification obligations under the Rule,” the FTC stated.

The policy statement approved Wednesday extends the FTC's “Health Breach Notification Rule” -- which currently covers vendors of personal health records and their service providers -- to app developers.

Khan also signaled her intention to more broadly examine the way data, including health information, is used for commercial purposes.

“While this Rule imposes some measure of accountability on tech firms that abuse our personal information, a more fundamental problem is the commodification of sensitive health information, where companies can use this data to feed behavioral ads or power user analytics,” she stated. “Given the growing prevalence of surveillance-based advertising, the Commission should be scrutinizing what data is being collected in the first place and whether particular types of business models create incentives that necessarily place users at risk.”

Commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter suggested in a concurring statement that the agency will consider issuing new privacy rules.

“I look forward to the Commission taking more action to limit the unfair collection and use of data, especially through rulemaking,” Slaughter said. “We all know that too many digital services collect more data than they need, keep it way too long, share it far too widely and use it in problematic ways. The FTC must lead a market shift towards data minimalism.”

Commissioner Christine Wilson, who dissented, suggested the FTC was moving too quickly by issuing the statement without first  seeking input from other agencies or the public.

“The policy statement significantly expands both the covered universe of entities and the circumstances under which the Commission will initiate enforcement,” she stated. “Given the novel and expansive interpretation of this Rule that the Commission announces today, and consistent with past practice, it would be prudent for the Commission to publish a Federal Register Notice announcing the modifications to the Rule.”

Salesforce has unveiled several AI-powered integrations for Marketing Cloud to help companies humanize interactions with customers.

One new offering -- Einstein Engagement Scoring in Salesforce CDP -- allows brands to omit users who are not likely to engage with emails or mobile and choose other channels such as social media. 

According to Salesforce, the other new tools include: 

• Datorama Connectors and Apps for Salesforce CDP and Interaction Studio—this helps marketers understand the business impact of their first-party, data-driven marketing and advertising
• Interaction Studio Templates—These templates extend personalization to customers via ATMs, point-of-sale systems, and call centers
• Interaction Studio Integration with Experience Cloud--this tool provides personalized web, mobile, and portal experiences based on real-time engagement
• Interaction Studio Integration with CRM—This provides sales and service teams with visibility into customer behavior, segmentation, and next-best actions
• Einstein Designer--This tool creates relevant content with the help of AI in seconds using variations of available images, copy, and headlines

These new features build on the recently announced integration of Salesforce and Slack. 

According to the State of Marketing Report, a study by Salesforce, 60% of customers are open to the use of AI to improve their experiences. The  top AI use cases are driving recommendations, personalizing the overall customer journey, and automating customer interactions. 

“Brands that have accelerated success during the pandemic are data-focused, embrace AI, prioritize privacy, and find agile ways to collaborate across their entire organization,” said Michael Kostow, executive vice president and general manager, Marketing Cloud, Salesforce.

Several Salesforce clients are taking this approach. 

For instance, HBO Max has added 14 million new subscribers in the U.S. and is now in 40 countries worldwide, utilizing a performance-driven marketing approach. 

“We need insights quickly in order to make data actionable, and Datorama helps us to do this by connecting different reporting feeds. states Charles Navarro, VP marketing technology at HBO Max. “With the ability to analyze the data at a granular level, we can test new tactics and campaign ideas to learn what works best for our different audiences.”

Another client, Boston Scientific, serves healthcare professionals and professions “and ultimately the caregivers and patients they serve,” says Danielle Comito, Global CDP Leader, Boston Scientific. 

Comito notes that customer information had been “siloed across different systems, making it harder for us to provide a hyper-personalized experience. Salesforce Marketing Cloud now unifies data from across our organization, so we have a single view of each customer and can build deeper, more holistic relationships.

Meanwhile, Momentive (formerly SurveyMonkey) has found a single source of truth for its data in Salesforce Marketing Cloud. “Having all our data in one place means we can create smarter automations and rules to help us tailor our messages to what the customer wants and needs, ensuring they hear only the best, most relevant information,” states Denis Scott, vice president of growth marketing at Momentive.

Chipotle's “Boorito” Halloween-themed campaign involved sending emails to lapsed and at-risk customers, with the goal of incentivizing their participation and regaining their loyalty. The messages included “buy-one-get-one” promotional codes. The campaign drew on Liveclicker's device detection capabilities and targeting rules to determine which users were engaging from mobile devices, and to automatically include text prompts into the emails. Halloween day redemption of the codes was strong.

AirMedCare Network is America’s largest air ambulance membership network dedicated to helping in critical situations by transporting patients to the closest appropriate medical facilities. Together with Zeta Global, the AMCN set out to create a complete lead nurture email series (mobile and desktop) for Fly-U-Home and AirMedCare Network brands, targeting users who showed interested in either of these brands. The email series utilized signature brand colors and fresh imagery, providing hyperlinks within the body of the email. In less than 2 months, the campaign welcomed 39 conversions.

As T-Mobile and Sprint merged, many of the Sprint customers were still on older devices, unaware that their phones would soon become incompatible with the merged network. Zeta Global was tasked with inspiring these consumers to upgrade their phones, facing with the challenge of having to convey a difficult message in a positive key. The solution lay in strategic testing with the goal to ultimately build the most effective template. The 10 touches Zeta generated 9.50% average CTOR—lifting engagement to heights T-Mobile/Sprint had previously thought unreachable.

This year’s holiday shopping season will look different. Marketers will rely more heavily on performance marketing as supply and demand plays a key role in 2021 campaign strategies.  

U.S. holiday retail sales in 2021 could increase 2.7% to $1.093 trillion, with ecommerce accounting for 18.9% of all holiday retail sales, eMarketer predicted earlier this year. 

Digital marketing agency NetElixir on Wednesday released its 2021 holiday ecommerce sales forecast and strategy.

NetElixir estimates that November and December will see between 6% to 7% year-over-year (YoY) increase, with total online sales likely to exceed 20% of retail sales.

Deloitte forecasts released Tuesday estimate higher ecommerce sales of between 11% and 15%, contributing between $210 billion and $218 billion to the trillions in sales for the period between November 2021 and January 2022.

Udayan Bose, founder and CEO at NetElixir, believes that with the Delta variant and some people holding back from getting the vaccine, the U.S. could see higher ecommerce sales with consumers staying out of stores this holiday season.

Inventory issues are likely, promoting buy online-and-pickup-in-store (BOPIS) to skyrocket this year.

Supply and demand will compete with each other. Most retailers will lower their digital marketing spend the week of December, as the ground shipping cutoff date for Christmas will most likely be December 14.

NetElixir mapped out the holiday season to analyze what marketers can expect.

During the week of November 14, NetElixir expects marketers will begin running teaser holiday promotions to drive early shopping behaviors. This activity will lead to Thanksgiving week promotions and campaigns.

By November 21, retailers will begin to provide deeper discounts, and will not be limited to Black Friday deals.

Bose suggests that retailers look to launch creative with category-level and product-specific promotions.

NetElixir predicts this to be the most important strategic week for online retailers. This is the week that large retailers will test performance marketing and creative promotional strategies.

Last-minute mobile purchases are expected to spike from December 19 to December 21.

BOPIS will remain important, and inventory issues are likely. 

Shipping cutoff dates and product availability will be the key limiting factors this year.