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Last April, Gamestop Corp. (GME) opened a store on Facebook to generate sales among the 3.5 million-plus customers who’d declared themselves “fans” of the video game retailer. Six months later, the store was quietly shuttered. Gamestop has company. Over the past year, Gap Inc., J.C. Penney (JCP) Co. and Nordstrom (JWN) Inc. have all opened and closed storefronts on Facebook Inc.’s (FB) social networking site.

“We just didn’t get the return on investment we needed from the Facebook market, so we shut it down pretty quickly,” Sheetz said in a telephone interview. “For us, it’s been a way we communicate with customers on deals, not a place to sell.”

“It was basically just another place to shop for all the stuff already available on the retailer websites,” Gerten said. “I give so-called F-commerce an ‘F.’”

Location technologies like GPS are sharing analytics on where and how this content is being viewed.  The good news?  Connected TVs definitely have a role to play in the multiscreen IoT – especially in the area of building new models of marketing and advertising relationships.

The way we look at location-based marketing (LBM) is unique – our definition is basically: The intersection of people, places and media.  We don’t equate LBM to just mobile [devices]. – Asif Khan, LBMA

once you know the location of the person you’re trying to influence – the question you should ask is: what media happens to be near them in that particular place? Could be a billboard, radio, television – anything. We’re very focused on media context.”  

acebook has known for a while that the things its users talk about are supremely interesting and relevant for advertisers. Twitter proved that basing an advertising model around brand mentions really works; Facebook is bound to follow suit. Already, we are seeing Facebook taking steps into Twitter’s territory by showcasing which topics and brands are trending in users’ News Feeds, and by aggregating hashtagged terms

Offline conversion for retailers. Speaking of consumers’ path-to-purchase on Facebook, the ability for retailers to track offline sales conversions from ads viewed on Facebook is another critical step Facebook is taking to give advertisers deeper insight into how their ads actually drive some type of consumer action.

more strategic thought around how to deploy mobile in a shopping arena—not necessarily the new technologies or the new checkout system because that’s going to happen no matter what.”

s you start to see third parties map indoor spaces [and] you start to see retailers put beacons on the shelves, I think there is going to be some massively interesting creative unlocked [in 2015].” 

adoption of mobile payments and loyalty programs by both retailers and consumers. We’ve finally reached a long-awaited tipping point with beacons and NFC, and these technologies are poised to supercharge in-store sales and turn the tables on showrooming.” 

Nicheworks with more than 6,300 social media influencers ranging from comedic personalities to photographers to foodies to fashion bloggers. Among the more than 100 brands and agencies it has worked with are Hewlett-Packard Co., Coca-Cola Co. and the National Football League. Hewlett-Packard’s HP Home & Home Office Store is No. 35 in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide while the National Football League is No. 151.

As a part of Twitter, Niche aims to build more tools, platforms and ways to help influencers link up with brands, write Niche co-founders Rob Fishman and Darren Lachtman in a blog post.

By acquiring Niche, Twitter will be the rare social network that stands to directly profit when an influencer works with a brand. But it won’t be alone. Tumblr last month launched Creatrs Network,

nstagram hopes that allowing people to complete their purchases inside the app will inspire them to shop more — and to create a big new business for parent company Facebook, which has recently signaled that it expects commerce and payments to represent the future of the company. For now, payment information stored with Facebook will only be used on Instagram. But it’s easy to imagine Facebook letting you use your credentials elsewhere in its family of apps.

In the meantime, Facebook says it won’t share your payment information with other users or with retailers.

Instagram believes shopping represents a massive new business opportunity. The Verge reported last year that the company is building a standalone shopping app. It also said Monday that 130 million people a month tap on product tags in shopping posts.

Seeking questions ask for product-specific use cases, and look for facts rather than opinions. “Does this hotel offer free wifi?”

Our study found that most questions asked in automotive (81%), travel (79%), and consumer electronics (79%) were seeking questions.

Samsung reps answer shopper questions on retailer sites under the moniker “Mr. Samsung,” and find that questions reveal large gaps in product information: 91% of the content they provide in answers is not already on the site.

Arising primarily from social media, they represent snippets—not streams—of information and can help companies to figure out what customers want and to spot looming industry and market disruptions before competitors do. Sometimes, companies notice them during data-analytics number-crunching exercises.

potting weak signals is more likely when companies can marshal dispersed networks of people who have a deep understanding of the business and act as listening posts

Nordstrom, for example, took an early interest in the possibilities of Pinterest, the digital-scrapbooking site where users “pin” images they like on virtual boards and share them with a larger community. Displayed on Pinterest, the retailer’s products generate significant interest: the company currently has more than four million followers on the site.

Percolate first identifies which social topics matter to brands’ audiences, then finds matching assets in those brands’ databases. SocialFlow tracks how many of a brand’s social followers are active throughout the day, then automatically posts the brand’s content at the best possible moment. Brand Networks taps historical sales and weather databases to tell retailers which products will generate the most social interest, based on local forecasts. SimpleFeed helps brands’ affiliates automate content selection — dynamically publishing social posts that have worked for other affiliates in the past.

100 characters is the engagement sweet spot for a tweet. 

But 40 is the magic number that Jeff Bullas found was most effective in his study of retail brands on Facebook. He measured engagement of posts, defined by “like” rate and comment rate, and the ultra-short 40-character posts received 86 percent higher engagement than others.

The ideal length of a headline is 6 words

cost-per-click (CPC) is down 2 percent year-over-year and 11 percent quarter-over-quarter, while clickthrough rate (CTR) rose 160 percent YoY and 20 percent QoQ. Facebook ad clicks overall were increased by 70 percent YoY and 48 percent QoQ. Impressions are up 40 percent YoY and 41 percent QoQ.

Comments on ad posts are up 16 percent YoY and 40 percent QoQ; likes are down 4 percent YoY and shares are up 2 percent. Engagement on video is up 25 percent YoY and 58 percent QoQ, showing that auto-play videos haven’t been as toxic as feared. Video plays are up 785 percent YoY and 134 percent QoQ after auto-play videos were implemented in Q4. Nearly 1/4 of all video plays on Facebook happen on Fridays. Posts with images still gain the most engagement, though the percentage of engagement for photo, link and text posts are all down YoY. Posts with links are up 77 percent YoY and 167 percent QoQ, as Facebook has made great strides in making link posts more visual. Most impressions in Q1 came on a Friday, with 15.7 percent of all impressions. Sunday is the least likely day to receive a comment on a post. Facebook referred revenue per visit is up 11 percent year-over-year and 2 percent quarter-over-quarter. Facebook produces 75 percent of traffic to retail sites, up 2 percent year-over-year and 13 percent quarter-over-quarter. Facebook refers 52 percent of social traffic to B2B high tech sites, up 34 percent year-over-year.