Marketing, Research, and Data News for [B]RIGHT Marketers

At [B]RIGHT, we illuminate data-informed digital solutions to help your brand succeed in an increasingly complex marketing landscape. We take the guesswork out of your marketing strategy.

ACCESS OUR LATEST NEWS ARTICLES | FEBRUARY 2022 EDITION

The State of Direct Mail

Lob, a direct mail automation platform, has published their 2022 State of Direct Mail report. Their insights arose from interviews with 170 marketing executives from US companies with over a thousand employees that send an average of between 100 thousand to 100 million mail pieces per year. The report concludes that 2021 brought many changes to how brands do business, and the direct mail process as a marketing channel is no exception. Marketers need direct mail that integrates into omnichannel marketing campaigns with processes that are fast, flexible, and measurable.

That is where direct mail programs join the marketing mix, where automations can send personalized, trackable, and measurable direct mail pieces. Forty-eight percent of survey respondents utilize personalized URLs with direct mail to measure conversion rates, and another 45% use customized QR codes. Eight in 10 enterprise companies across all industries surveyed send some sort of personalized direct mail. That comes as no surprise when some marketers report response rates exceeding 27% when paired with email marketing tactics.

Google Announces Privacy Sandbox Rollout, Giving Two-Year Buffer

Google announced this month that its Privacy Sandbox will roll out on Android markets. The move is intended to limit sharing of user data with third parties and to phase out cross-app identifiers, which also includes Google’s advertising ID tracker. Google said that it would continue to service existing advertising ID services for at least another two years, so it’s a much more gradual rollout than Apple's abrupt privacy changes.

This announcement comes as no surprise, as privacy concerns have prompted many recent martech changes. Luckily Google's gradual phasing out will allow time for marketers to adapt their strategies and retool. Many businesses, including retail giants like Home Depot, Target, and Walmart, are making the shift to acquiring first-party data by investing in retail media networks to sell and place advertisements while also ramping up email list automations. More emphasis will be placed on earned and owned media and less on straight media advertising, as targeting options will become less niche, less contextually relevant, and more broad. Google has attempted to soften the blow with its rollout of Topics, targeting based on user interests and browsing history over a cycling three-week period.

Trade Desk Rolls Out OpenPath, Giving Direct Access to Premium Ad Inventory

The Trade Desk is rolling out OpenPath, a new product meant to provide advertisers with more access to premium ad inventory on top publishers' websites.OpenPath should make it easier to navigate the programmatic spaces which have long been plagued by transparency issues and controlled by a handful of platforms (e.g., Google, to name the key player).

At the same time that OpenPath is winding up, they will be phasing out the use of Google’s Open Bidding tool. While they will continue to buy Google ad inventory, this change is seen by some as a blow to Google and appreciated by independent ad-tech firms who see Google as “wielding outsized control over the digital ecosystem.”

How Much Is Google Search Used? 10 Statistics You Need to Know

Google, as a search engine, is ingrained in the everyday lives of most web users. Since its inception in 1997, it gained market share at an exponential rate, and today it’s the largest search engine in the industry. The team at Oberlo, a product-sourcing and dropshipping business startup resource, has compiled some key insights on Google search usage. Everyone is familiar with Google as the go-to search engine, but what does that actually look like?

1. Google was visited 89.3 billion times in the past month alone (Similarweb, 2022).
2. Google holds 91.9 percent of the market share (GS Statcounter, 2022).
3. Google processes over 99,000 searches every single second. This makes more than 8.5 billion searches a day (Internet Live Stats, 2022).
4. To date, Google Lens has been asked more than one billion questions (Google, 2019).
5. 63 percent of Google’s US organic search traffic originated from mobile devices (Merkle Inc., 2019).
6. As of October 2019, Facebook was the most searched keyword on Google (Ahrefs, 2019).
7. 84 percent of respondents use Google three times a day or more (Moz, 2019).
8. 46 percent of product searches begin on Google (Jumpshot, 2018).
9. 90 percent of survey respondents said they were likely to click on the first set of results (Search Engine Land, 2018).
10. Organic search produced 23 percent of all site visits in Q2 2019 (Merkle, 2019).

(Editorial) Methodology: We help brands grow based on data, research, data analysis and synthesis, and a hefty dose of proven processes, tactics, and channel-specific strategies. | Objective: To distribute timely insights and information about tools, trends, and research and data strategies that work. | Sample size: n=the entirety of the Internet. | Audience: Smart brand marketers that understand the importance of using data and research to inform strategic decision-making.