Hugh Williams
Editor, DTCDaily
Articles by Hugh
Building a DTC Travel Business: Q&A with Tourlane
Direct-to-consumer is one of the most evolving, talked-about, and exciting trends in business at the moment, spanning sectors from fashion and apparel, to insurance and finance. In this Q&A, Julian Stiefel, co-CEO & founder, Tourlane, a leading online travel agency, explains how his business is differentiating from traditional brands, the company’s acquisition strategy, and how they are building loyalty. Tell us how your product differs from more traditional legacy brands in your sector? The difference to other pure booking platforms is [...]
Uber’s Subscription Launch Is a Glimpse of Direct-to-Consumer Brands’ Future
When Uber launched a new subscription service earlier this month, it joined a long list of digital brands that have sought to drive long-term loyalty using a subscription model. Whilst ‘Uber Ride Pass‘ is currently only being trialled in five U.S. cities and won’t be reaching UK shores anytime soon, Alex Hamilton (pictured below), head of innovation, Isobar, feels that it’s a telling glimpse into a future where brands own a particular category or sub-category and lock customers in through [...]
Preparing for the Future Consumer with DTC: Q&A with MediaCom
The direct-to-consumer (DTC) business model is something on most retailers’ minds at the moment. Here, we talk with Liam Brennan, global director of innovation, MediaCom, to discuss how seriously traditional brands should be taking the DTC revolution, how best to incorporate it into their business, and in what ways traditional retail still trumps DTC. RetailTechNews: Can you explain where BLINK sits within Mediacom, and how your role interacts with traditional and DTC retailers? Liam Brennan: MediaCom BLINK enables clients to embrace innovation linked [...]
IPA Bellwether Report Shows Weakest Growth in 3 Years
Total marketing budgets were revised higher during the third quarter of 2018, extending the current period of growth to six years, but to the weakest extent in almost three years. This is according to the Q3 IPA Bellwether Report, published last week (17 October). Report highlights – Cost pressures and growing uncertainty weigh on budget – Internet marketing spending plans continue to provide key support to growth – Most downbeat assessment on industry-wide financial prospects since Q4 2011 – Muted ad-spend growth forecasts for 2018 [...]
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How the Ad Ecosystem Is Morphing to Address Ad Fraud
The simple relationship between publishers and advertisers has become increasingly complex, with the introduction of sophisticated digital ad buying. The growth of the internet has also caused an ad oversupply that’s left massive amounts of inventory unsold. In this piece, Anudit Vikram (pictured below), SVP, audience solutions, Dun & Bradstreet, says that to combat the problem, the industry has introduced ad networks, DSPs, and SSPs between the buyer and seller, making the ecosystem more and more complex. What was originally created [...]
The Incremental Visit: The Opportunity to Measure What Matters
Thanks to the advances in location technologies, it is possible to know which visitors to a retailer’s store have seen the brand’s ad. However, simply measuring total in-store visits of consumers exposed to a digital campaign is not enough to know the effectiveness of a retailer’s advertising. In fact, this can lead to wasted ad spend or the application of inaccurate insights to future drive-to-store campaigns. In this piece for RetailTechNews, Andy McNab, UK managing director, S4M, explains the significance of measuring [...]
Standards to Achieve Transparency: Q&A with Tim Cadogan, CEO, OpenX
In this Q&A, Tim Cadogan, CEO, OpenX talks to ExchangeWire about the progress that has made in terms of transparency, the importance of an industry-wide standard to achieve further progress, and the areas of the industry that are seeing the most exciting developments. ExchangeWire: Transparency has been under the spotlight over the last months. Has significant progress been made to increase quality and transparency since it hit the headlines? Tim Cadogan: Yes, there has been material progress in both quality and transparency [...]
Why Lack of Diversity Is a Ticking Time Bomb for the Media Industry: Q&A with Jenny Biggam, Founder, the7stars
As in most industries, the online advertising ecosystem faces the same challenges with diversity. It is apparent there’s an issue, but who does the responsibility fall to to do something about it? In this Q&A with ExchangeWire, Jenny Biggam (pictured below), founder, the7stars, discusses the challenge of creating a more diverse industry. ExchangeWire: What are the main social and economic factors threatening to block the pipeline of skills entering the media industry? Jenny Biggam: Perhaps unsurprisingly, the most pressing obstacle for would-be [...]
In-housing, PMPs & Growth of CEE: IAB Europe Assesses the Industry
This Wednesday (12 September, 2018), at DMEXCO, IAB Europe launched two research reports: ‘European Attitudes to Programmatic Advertising Report’ and ‘European Programmatic Market Sizing Report’. With both showing unique insight into the programmatic advertising industry, this piece takes an exclusive look at some of their findings. Now in its fourth year, the ‘Attitudes to Programmatic Advertising’ report shows how opinions, adoption, and strategies are evolving. The report’s key findings show that: – Programmatic in-housing continues to increase and is now the favoured model for [...]
Over-Reliance on the Bidstream Is Failing Retailers Looking to Make the Most of Location-Based Advertising
Today, using location data as part of ad campaigns is the norm for most retailers – and for good reason. Not only does it enable them to build location-informed audiences, but also to target consumers with the right message, at the right location, and the right time, as well as to measure the effectiveness of their advertising at driving consumers in-store. In this piece for RetailTechNews, Mark Slade, CEO, Location Sciences, explains that, despite this, we are acutely aware that [...]
