Commerce Outsights
March 11, 2024
Meta-metatrends, the death of third-party cookies (at last?), and the latest happenings in media x commerce.
Hello, and welcome to Commerce Outsights—Nebulab’s bi-weekly collection of the best reads, listens, and tools from the world of retail, e-commerce, and DTC.
This was a busy couple of weeks as we prepare for an even busier Q2. We’re planning some exciting things for this next quarter, but we’re not quite ready to tell you about them—so, here’s your usual roundup of the most interesting news from the world of e-com.
This week, we’re a bit all over the place: we discuss meta-metatrends, the importance of having a technology leader, the death of third-party cookies, and (social) media and commerce synergies.
At the bottom, you’ll also find a roundup of the most popular content we’ve published lately—just in case you’ve missed it!
Does your brand need help with strategy, design or development?
For over a decade, we’ve been shaping, launching, and scaling shopping experiences for category disruptors such as Cometeer, Framework, and Huckberry. No matter where you’re going, we can help you get there.
Thought provokers
The META Trending Trends: 2024 (18 mins). Every year, cultural theorist Matt Klein publishes a report on meta-trends, i.e., an analysis of the most reported trends of the year. This time, he went a step further, analyzing his previous... analyses, to understand how (if at all) trends shift over time and what it means to innovate. Call it, if you will, a meta-meta-trending-trends-analysis.
2 mins on... Tech Leaders (4 mins). Most consumer brands are not technology companies. Most consumer brands should have a technology leader in-house. These two statements do not contradict each other. You can and should hold both beliefs at the same time. In fact, having someone to help you navigate technology choices might just be your best antidote to shiny object syndrome.
Goings-on
🔒 OK but really, are third-party cookies going to be gone from Google’s Chrome by the end of 2024? (4 mins). The jury's still out on this one. It seems increasingly unlikely that Google will be able to sunset third-party cookies before Q1 2025, and yet brands and agencies are still bracing for the event—as they should be doing.
TikTok-Native Brands (3 mins). This is a trend we've been watching for a while now—brands that are born and scaled on TikTok Shop. With that said, some users are getting fed up with how aggressively TikTok is pushing commerce, and TikTok is facing severe regulatory presure in the US at the moment, so we'll see how this pans out.
🔒 Why Walmart is buying a TV brand (5 mins). Walmart's spending $2B to buy Vizio, the smart TV manufacturer. This will give Walmart the ability to advertise on yet another screen in the consumer's home. Not surprising, given Walmart's recent experiments with shoppable media.
Tool of the week
Editor’s note: We don’t accept sponsorships for this newsletter. All product recommendations come from our consulting team.
Novel. This is one interesting tool our team has stumbled across in the last few weeks: branded Apple/Google Wallet passes that act as a loyalty program and enable new communication and referral channels. Really interesting concept--especially for brands that also sell wholesale or in owned stores.
You might have missed...
Alessandro has been writing about Coachtopia's digital product IDs, Maisonette's personalization experience, and whether it still makes sense to talk about headless e-commerce.
Alberto has published a blog post about the different ways to build Shopify automations, from Shopify Flow to custom apps.
We published some primers on how we do e-commerce design, Shopify development, and Solidus development. Check them out!
Does your brand need help with strategy, design or development?
For over a decade, we’ve been shaping, launching, and scaling shopping experiences for category disruptors such as Cometeer, Framework, and Huckberry. No matter where you’re going, we can help you get there.
That’s it for today!
If you’ve come across any interesting articles, podcasts, or tools we should check out, you can email us at [email protected].
See you in two weeks! 👋