This ongoing report on consumers provides valuable advertising and media news for marketers and advertisers. We curate stories of interest and insight. Use the button below to have each Audience Intel Report delivered directly to your inbox.
Get Intel Report EmailsDon’t Worry Be Happy
Making adults happy, too. After past successful collaborations with Travis Scott and J Balvin, McDonald’s scored another success with an “Adult Happy Meal” featuring fashion brand Cactus Plant Flea Market. Traffic counts showed an YOY increase of 37% for the first week of the promotion.
Happy holidays? A new consumer study by IBM shows that consumers are expecting to begin holiday shopping sooner, travel less and spend more this year. 66% say they’re more concerned about the economy this year and expected budgets are up about 8% over 2021.
Happy holidays, too? Potential optimism is reflected in recent research from the ICSC. Their forecast is predicting a 6.7% increase in October through December sales – that’s about flat when adjusted for inflation, but still not bad news. They’re also projecting a 9.9% gain in dining out, so maybe retailers and restaurants will both hear the jingle of registers ringing.
A pitch for relaxing. Charlotte’s web, a Colorado pioneer in the medical marijuana has signed a first-ever deal with one of the big four U.S. sporting organizations. Under the agreement, the company becomes the “official CBD of the MLB” and will launch a line of MLB-branded products.
This for That
Smart consumers using smart TVs. Consumers are seeing the value of ad-supported connected TV offerings. A recent survey by LG showed 67% of respondents preferring a less expensive ad-supported model to ad-free subscriptions. In addition, 30% reported dropping a paid subscription service in the last year, while 25% say they’ve added a free ad-supported platform.
There are some things crypto can’t buy, for everything else there’s … Mastercard is launching a program to help financial institutions offer cryptocurrency trading to customers. The service, expected to launch next year in the U.S., Israel and Brazil, is in response to polling that shows 60% of consumers interested in the assets, but waiting to test the waters until they can do it through existing banks.
Emotion or reason? Pioneering research firm, Gallup, has the receipts when they say that emotion drives about 70% of consumers’ brand loyalty and preference. The company cites two internal studies that underline the fact that most decisions are based on emotional factors and only 30% are based on rational factors.
Setting Off in New Directions
Bookworms, listen up. Spotify debuted its new focus in September – audiobooks. With the popularity of podcasts growing – the goal is to convert some of those listeners into audiobook lovers. Nir Zichermna, Head of Audiobooks, stated “Just as Spotify has changed the way that people create and listen to music and podcasts, we believe we can do the same thing over time with audiobooks, by offering new formats, new ways to interact with content and new ways to discover.”
Giant getting giant-er. TikTok, the newest social media giant, posted some newsworthy positions on LinkedIn. The jobs such as “logistics solutions manager” indicate movement towards an e-commerce supply chain, competing directly with Amazon. For advertisers, users buying on the platform could “dramatically reduce friction, simplify the journey, and have a huge impact on improving conversion rates.”
Get Intel Report Emails