Our exclusive rundown of Google’s annual product roadmap and what it means for advertisers now.

Lockdowns ending in the UK and USA have seen a retail and service sector recovery - but the picture for ecommerce in the two markets is diverging. We look at the latest data and analyse what this means for ecommerce strategies, and how the patterns around ending lockdown should guide decisions for the next round of opening up in the UK and across Europe.

As 2021 shows every sign of further acceleration for the reach and effectiveness of social commerce, we caught up with Leanne, director of Paid Social, to get her take on what’s happening across the channel right now.

For a decade, the received wisdom was that the digital landscape had settled into immovable monopolies, too big and too clever to be challenged. But change has been bubbling away - and now the pandemic has begun to blow the field wide open again. But who will benefit - consumers, advertisers, or the new tech winners?

Familiar shops are disappearing and shopping is changing - but it doesn’t have to be High Noon for the High Street. Richard Brooks of Kinase outlines why.

Ecommerce saw huge growth in 2020 as it helped people continue to shop and get what they need. Digital marketing now has a huge opportunity in 2021 to sustain this growth and continue to connect with customers in a changed environment. We outline three of the biggest challenges and how to get them right in what will be a transformative year.

We examine key predictions, emerging trends, unmissable opportunities and the continued rise of Amazon. How big will an online-first Black Friday be?

Which changes from the pandemic era will stick? One emerging answer so far for digital advertising is the jump up in Smart TV viewing and advertising volumes - both remaining higher than pre-pandemic levels.

Are there markets where your business can fulfil unmet demand? It may be that competitors execute poorly, have found their supply chains disrupted, or haven’t yet recognised the opportunity.

Knowing how and when to expand into new markets is the core requirement of all successful export strategies. But collecting the right information to inform those decisions can be difficult.

Ecommerce needs to plan for turbulent H2

The current position for ecommerce in the UK is one of sales stabilisation combined with new growth, but there are a series of potentially difficult challenges ahead.

The swing to ecommerce seen during lockdown isn’t crumbling away. Both the ONS report for June and new data from the British Retail Consortium confirmed earlier transaction data, indicating that retail sales had almost recovered to their pre-pandemic levels. This countered more gloomy previous forecasts.

Benedict Evans is an independent tech analyst who has spent 20 years analysing mobile, digital media and technology. In his words, “I try to work out what’s going on and what it means.” His annual presentations on macro and strategic trends are key events, and ‘The end of the beginning’ delivered in 2019 at Google HQ in San Francisco impressed Kinases’s directors, Richard and Chris when they attended. So when Google invited us to join Benedict for an ‘Insights Live’ hour, in which he would go through his views on ‘Paths to the new normal’, we were keen to listen and ask him some questions.

Richard is front and centre of everything at Kinase. He founded the agency in 2010 with Chris Dillabough, and together they have grown it from 2 people to nearly 50.

At a very changeable time for digital, we took a step back to discuss how Covid has impacted the agency, and what current trends Richard is watching in the second half of the year. What will happen next, and where will the agency go from here?

We look at the latest survey data on new ecommerce adopters and what will make them stay; the publication of the UK government’s Google and Facebook competition report; and the launch of TikTok self service ads.

Governments are gearing up to take on tech giants. Will corporate breakups occur, and how will these platforms evolve to stay on top of change? We look at the digital advertising implications, and consider what will happen next to privacy, monopolies, and the regulation of online content.

Google Shopping is being relaunched to make it a more personalised, unified and user-friendly experience. This isn’t a small change - it’s a substantial step up to enable Shopping to continue competing with Amazon. It is aimed at driving higher conversion rates and at increasing the amount of searches and length of time spent in Shopping.

We believe this change will combine Amazon’s personalisation with Google’s ability to match search queries with revenue driving ads and products.

The clock is ticking down for third party cookies, with the IAB predicting that mobile ad IDs will follow. How should advertisers plan for these changes? And how will the architecture of digital advertising be rebuilt?

We have mapped out four key areas which digital marketers need to develop strategies for, and have then picked out key trends and likely next developments. 

Not all leads are created equal. And neither are marketing campaigns. Particularly when it comes to lead gen. By optimising to better lead gen KPIs, ROI improvements of 2X and above are easily achievable. We lift the lid on how.

Performance Max is here - some hate it, some love it, and some think it’s the name of the next Avengers villain. Having worked with Google and tested Performance Max, Kinase automation expert Paula Marmolejo Morazo brings together key facts and recommendations.