dentsu 2022 Media Trends

 Our new 2022 Trends report has been published - all about how we are transitioning to a 'new normal' as we move through the pandemic.  

See the deck on Slideshare below - 

dentsu 2022 media trends from dentsu

Over 20% of McDonalds sales in the UK in Q4 2020 were delivery sales

 "The only thing I'd add John is, as Chris mentioned, obviously we're seeing both digital and delivery growing significantly in those IOM markets. In the U.K., for example, over 20% of their sales in Q4 were delivery sales. So, we are seeing some significant growth both in delivery and digital."

Source:  Extract from the McDonalds earnings call, reported by The Motley Fool, 28th January 2021

Amazon is adding eleven planes to its delivery fleet in 2021 & 2022

" Today, Amazon announced its first-ever purchase of eleven Boeing 767-300 aircraft, expanding its fleet to continue to serve customers. The purchases include seven aircraft from Delta and four aircraft from WestJet, which will join the network by 2022. Amazon Air’s fleet expansion comes at a time when customers are relying on fast, free shipping more than ever."

Source:  Press Release from Amazon, 5th January 2021

UPS 'expects nearly 9m returns' in the first week of 2021

 "UPS expects to induct 1.75 million returns into its system every day this week, which would represent the highest weekly total of returns in the carrier's history, a spokesperson told sister publication Supply Chain Dive via email.

The expected 8.75 million returns this week is a 23% increase over the highest week of returns for the 2019-2020 holiday season.

The carrier's single-day record is 1.9 million returns — set Jan. 2, 2020."

Source:  Retail Dive, 7th January 2021

Amazon is expected to make over $20 billion in ad revenues in 2020

 "Amazon’s advertising division is pulling in big bucks as its marketplace merchants jockey for position amid the pandemic-fueled eCommerce boom.

The tech behemoth is tracking to post its first $100 billion quarter, with an estimated $21 billion coming from annual advertising dollars alone, the Financial Times reported on Tuesday (Dec. 29), citing FactSet data.

Amazon’s crowded digital marketplace has caused merchants to step up their advertising on the site in order to be more visible in search results. The eCommerce giant's advertising business is currently growing faster than its retail, cloud and Prime subscription divisions.

The 47 percent increase in advertising dollars over last year has helped Amazon become a formidable rival to Google search, which has dominated online advertising."

Source:  PYMNTS, citing a report in the Financial Times, 29th December 2020

Amazon delivered over 1.5 billion parcels over Christmas 2020

 "Amazon is reporting a record-breaking holiday shopping season that saw more than 1.5 billion toys, electronics and household goods delivered amid the global COVID-19 pandemic.

“Amazonians around the world have truly shown what it means to be customer-centric and support our communities this year,” Jeff Wilke, CEO of worldwide consumer at Amazon, said in a press release on Tuesday (Dec. 29). 

“When our customers — including healthcare workers on the front lines — most needed essential supplies, our teams and partners went above and beyond to stock and deliver those items,” he said."

Source:  PYMNTS, citing a press release from Amazon, 29th December 2020

Note - I'm assuming that this covers the period from Black Friday onwards.

Etsy sold more than 12m masks in April 2020

"Etsy began pushing homemade masks in early April, and the results panned out in a big way: total sales on the platform doubled last month, by and large thanks to a surge in face mask sales. For comparison, Etsy’s marketplace sales figures between January and March were up only 16 percent.
More than 12 million face masks were sold during April, totaling around $133 million in sales. Etsy says they represented the second largest category of product sales across the entire site during the month of April."
Source:  The Verge, 6th May 2020

11% of product views on Amazon come from sponsored posts

"It’s never been more difficult to sell stuff on Amazon.
Last year, Recode reported how Amazon had, over time, stuffed its search results with advertisements, so in order to show up in customer search results, brands were increasingly having to buy ads.
Since then it’s gotten worse.
Now 11 percent of all product views on Amazon come from sponsored listings, up 3 percentage points in just the past year, according to new data from digital research firm Jumpshot. It’s not clear if that’s because there are more sponsored ads or because sponsored ads have gotten more effective. Going to a product’s page also doesn’t necessarily mean customers will end up buying that product, but brands are nonetheless forking over money to attract these customers’ eyeballs.
Showing up higher in search results greatly affects whether people will click on and buy products. This has repercussions for both small third-party marketplace sellers that base their whole livelihoods around selling on Amazon, as well as giant brands like Samsonite, Dove, and Levi’s. Amazon didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment."
Source:  Vox, 16th September 2019

Note - these may be US stats

There are 25m businesses on Instagram; half don't have a website

"We have 25 million businesses on the platform, half of whom don’t list a website. So Instagram is their digital platform. And so they’re already engaging with their customers in Feed and in Stories and through Direct (messaging). And so being able to turn that discovery and consideration mechanism into an actual purchase is something that I think is great for businesses, great for people, and truly could be good for our business."
Source:  Interview with Vishal Shah, Instagram's Head of Product, on Chaddar's Medium blog, 21st March 2019

Yelp's US restaurant booking service managed 5.6m diners in Valentine's week 2019

""Yelp Inc. (NYSE:YELP), the company that connects people with great local businesses, today announced strong growth and momentum in its restaurant services offerings, with a record-setting Valentine's Day week in which Yelp’s reservation and waitlist software handled 5.6 million diners. This comes on the heels of the company closing out 2018 by managing 22 million diners in December, driven in part by rapid growth in diners booking directly through the Yelp app, which tripled year over year in the fourth quarter compared to Q4 2017."

Source:  Press release from Yelp, 26th February 2019

Note - this is number of diners, not number of bookings; a table for four is four, not one.  Still, big numbers!

eBay's algorithms can identify 40% of credit card fraud transactions

"eBay scientists have published a report which says that it’s new AI algorithm can identify 40% of credit card fraud transactions with high precision. A significant finding for a sector which solely relies on technology for fraud detection.
As always there are two sides of the coin for any entity or method. In fraud detection also, the techniques and tools can either focus on good actors or bad actors. Till now it has been the former. Where the truth is that majority of transactions conducted are by good actors. So it was imperative to study the behaviour of good actors, in fact much more important than those of bad actors.
Hence eBay, rather than focusing on the changing patterns employed by bad actors to circumvent protective barriers, they decided to instead analyses instances of good behaviour.
San Jose-based eBay scientists Utkarsh Porwal and Smruthi Mukund noted that patterns of good behaviour do not change with time. The data points that represent this form of conduct have consistent spatial arrangements. Porwal and Mukund suggested a clustering method for identifying outliers and to later formulate a score, which would determine consistency and in turn, good behaviour."

Source:  Next Big What, 14th November 2018

Singles Day generated over $30bn in sales

"Another year, another gross merchandise volume record for Alibaba’s 11.11 Global Shopping Festival.
At the stroke of midnight, when the rolling counter stopped, 2018 GMV was RMB213.5 billion ($30.8 billion), 27% higher than last year’s RMB168.3 billion. As 11.11 wore on, milestones from the previous 10 years fell, one by one. Just after 4:00 p.m., it was a foregone conclusion that this year would be the biggest 11.11 ever – something Alibaba Group executives had promised heading into the shopping festival.
But as they took the stage to speak to media, while satisfied with the record GMV, abundantly clear was how proud they were that the digital ecosystem they’d crafted over the past several years performed as robustly as anyone could have hoped."
Source:  Alizila, 11th November 2018
Also - Apple was the best selling mobile phone brand

Harry's has 6m customers - including 1m women

"Harry’s Inc., the premium men’s personal care products is launching its first brand out of its accelerator Harry’s Labs: Flamingo, with a focus on women’s shaving needs.
On Tuesday, Flamingo, which follows a DTC model, debuts with the intent of speaking to the 1 million female customers of Harry’s (the company currently has 6 million customers total). With an initial product lineup that includes razors, wax kits, shaving gel and body lotion that are all priced under $20, Flamingo joins Billie, Angel Shave Club, All Girl’s Shave Club and other female-oriented brands in the DTC shaving space. Harry’s isn’t just hoping to corner the female shaving market but also to add to its existing product portfolio."

Source:  Glossy, 16th October 2018

Amazon has over 120 own-label brands

"Amazon created its first private label brand in 2007, when it started selling bedding and bath products under the Pinzon line.
Since then, Amazon has added 125 other brands, according to TJI Research, which tracks Amazon's growth. The collection includes everything from paper towels and toilet paper under the name Presto! to T-shirts and shorts for kids labeled Spotted Zebra.
And Amazon is accelerating its private label strategy. It has introduced about six dozen brands in the past 18 months, according to a study by Evan Neufeld and Cooper Smith, analysts at research firm Gartner L2."

Source:  CNN, 8th October 2018

$300m has been raised through Facebook Birthday Fundraisers in one year

"Today we’re sharing some major milestones for the first year of birthday fundraisers on Facebook and announcing plans to help people more easily find nonprofits to support in the year ahead.
People raised more than $300 million for the causes they care about using birthday fundraisers.
St. Jude, Alzheimer’s Association, the American Cancer Society, Share Our Strength – No Kid Hungry, and the ASPCA are among the top beneficiaries of birthday fundraisers."
Source:  Facebook's newsroom, 15th August 2018

Amazon's grocery sales rose 40% year on year

"New data shows that Amazon second-quarter grocery sales came in at $650 million, up 40 percent year over year. The report, released by One Click Retail, also revealed that the eCommerce giant held 18 percent of U.S. online grocery sales since 2017, the largest share of any single retailer. In fact, Amazon’s current share of the online grocery space has now doubled that of its closest competitor.
That growth comes with “nearly every category attracting more and more grocery shoppers to Amazon,” according to report author Jacob Porter, director of One Click’s global marketing.
Beverages comprise most of Amazon’s online grocery sales market, with “cold beverages at $140 million (+36 percent) and coffee at $135 million (+40 percent) in the second quarter. Coffee, in fact, accounted for seven of Amazon’s 10 best-selling grocery items. The Original Donut Shop Regular Medium Roast Coffee (pack of 72 single-serve K-Cup pods)” continued to hold the top spot for the quarter, according to reports."

Source:  PYMNTS, 20th July 2018

Note - I'm assuming that the numbers are global, but that most of the sales will have happened in the US

21% of US apparel sales are made online

"Online apparel retailers, particularly pure-players, are set to take share from brick-and-mortar rivals through next year, according to a new report from global information company NPD Group emailed to Retail Dive.
Last year, 21% of annual apparel sales came from website purchases, and 76% from in-store purchases, according to the report. And while in-store purchases declined 3% compared to 2016, online apparel sales rose 7% to $46 billion.
Almost half of U.S. online shoppers bought apparel last year, and the annual apparel online spend per buyer rose 11% compared to 2016, according to NPD."

Source:  Retail Dive, 20th July 2018

More than a quarter of American clothing sales by value are online

"Online apparel sales accounted for 27.4% of overall U.S. apparel sales last year, up from 23.5% in 2016 and 20.7% in 2015, according to the most recent Internet Retailer Online Apparel Report published last week.
Apparel retailers dominated Internet Retailer’s 2018 Top 1000 list with 266 (more than any other category) making the list. That doesn’t include mass-merchant giants like Amazon (number one on that list) and Walmart (number three).
Many consumers say they like buying apparel online: 43.2% of respondents to a February survey of 2,535 U.S. consumers by PYMNTS.com said they prefer to shop for clothing in stores, while 26.9% prefer to shop only online and 29.9% said they prefer to shop both. But other research has found that more shoppers want to "try before they buy" clothing online."

Source:  Retail Dive, 2nd July 2018

Nearly 20% of Amazon merchants make more than $1m in sales per year

"A survey found that 19 percent of third-party merchants that sell goods on Amazon have made more than $1 million in sales this year, an increase from 10 percent in 2017. It also found that 3 percent made more than $10 million, an increase of 1 percent from last year.
Feedvisor, an eCommerce company that helps merchants price goods on Amazon and other online marketplaces, surveyed 1,200 Amazon merchants this year and 1,600 in 2017, and was distributed to the same sellers both years. Nearly 50 percent of the merchants surveyed sell almost exclusively with Amazon, with revenue from the eCommerce marketplace accounting for 81 percent to 100 percent of their sales."

Source:  PYMNTS, 24th May 2018

The Wish shopping app has 75m monthly users, and more than $1bn in revenues

"If you log onto the Wish app, you can buy dress shoes for $15, a watch for $3 or a 2-terabyte flash drive for $10.
Peter Szulczewski, CEO and co-founder of Wish, is hoping to turn those dirt-cheap prices into a sales empire to rival Walmart. And he has the numbers to suggest that's not such a crazy idea.
In an interview with CNET, he revealed a series of eye-popping figures about the discount online retailer. He said his San Francisco startup for the first time hit over $1 billion in revenue last year and has more than doubled revenue every year since its inception eight years ago. He added that "it looks like we will again" double revenue in 2018.
Szulczewski also said Wish hit 75 million monthly active users this April, has over 1 million merchants on its site and offers a selection of over 200 million items. The company expects to ship over 1 billion items this year. Plus, Wish is sitting on a war chest of over $1 billion in funding. In comparison, eBay has 171 million active buyers and Amazon has 2 million merchants, though both have staffs significantly larger than Wish's small team of about 500 employees."
Source:  CNET, 11th June 2018