Page 16 - Adnews Magazine Sep-Oct 2020
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were shopping more online, with three-quarters (74 per cent) of Australians having bought some- thing online throughout June to July, and the annual value of the ecommerce market in Australia up by 13 per cent. We saw the big social media companies vie for this growing market with new ecommerce tools.
Tanya Koppe, Mindshare national head of digital, says while social channels slightly dipped from a volume perspec- tive, their share remained the same within the marketing mix.
“Ecommerce was a driving force behind Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and Pinterest’s revenue growth in Q2,” Koppe tells AdNews.
“With social restrictions in place, these social platforms were able to provide businesses the opportunity to continue to operate and discover new audiences. We saw Facebook and Instagram Shops launch; Snapchat built a full suite of prod- ucts for ecommerce and Pinterest launched the new Shop tab within its Lens visual search results.”
Instagram, which analysts expect helped pull Facebook through the second quarter, expanded Instagram Shopping to more business and creators, and also rolled out tools such as food delivery, gift cards and Support Small Business stickers, giving brands new ways to promote them- selves. The company’s main plat- form, Facebook, launched Facebook Shops, allowing busi- nesses to set up a single store across Facebook and Instagram for free.
Meanwhile Snapchat rolled out Places on Maps in June, allowing businesses to promote themselves as Australia started to emerge from strict lockdowns. The social media’s platform’s local boss, Kathryn Carter, told AdNews at the time it would help give the platform a bigger slice of advertising revenue from small businesses.
“Places has been a positive step in enabling us to have a relevant solution to support small to medium businesses across Australia,” says Carter. “Especially at the moment when businesses want to connect with consumers and let them know they’re open.
“It’s very much been an acceleration of trends that already existed.” Tanya Koppe, Mindshare National Head of Digital
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“My perspective is that the current situation has highlighted the impor- tance of having a really sound ecommerce strategy across all retailers.”
Experts say the pandemic didn’t produce new trends around online shopping but that it simply accelerated what we were already seeing taking place on social media.
“It’s very much been an acceleration of trends that already existed,” says Koppe. “As well as video and live virtual events seeing a huge increase during this period, the pandemic has seen the acceleration of ecommerce within the social channels.
“It has always been a key initiative for most of the social platforms to evolve their ecommerce offerings. All social platforms saw a spike in users during the first half of the year as consumers went online to get their social connection fix. So it was inevitable ecommerce was going to be fast-tracked to accommodate the need that was presenting itself with our lockdown restrictions.”
Wavemaker’s national head of technology platforms, Victoria Brennan, agrees that the pandemic simply delivered more widespread adoption.
“People had more time to play so we saw them unleashing their creativity with vertical video stories — from Snap to Instagram to TikTok,” she tells AdNews.
“Restrictions on travel meant people overcame reservations with shop- ping online, sent more messages and learnt how to video call, even demo- graphics that hadn’t previously been tech adopters. The surge of users in a biddable environment meant we could get more bang for our buck. So
        

















































































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