Guiseppe is an Account Executive at Oath partnering with some of the top retail and e-commerce advertisers. He leads native ad sales and strategy for the retail vertical and helps drive success for e-commerce advertisers through innovative ad formats.
What major changes have you seen across the eCommerce digital marketing landscape in the last few years?
With mobile at the forefront of eCommerce, an important shift we’ve seen is the reduced window for a user’s path to conversion. The path from initial ad exposure to purchase is definitely minimizing. Reducing the number of required clicks or steps has been fundamental in both the growth of eCommerce advertising as well as driving up mobile conversion rates.
Amazon obviously paved the way in reducing the clutter between exposure and conversion, and now we’re seeing companies like Oath and other leading platforms figuring out creative solutions to reduce this path to purchase – in some cases even allowing for the transaction to take place directly on the advertising platform itself, without forcing a consumer to another site.
What advice would you have for brands advertising on the Oath Ad Platforms native and search marketplace?
Native gives advertisers access to some of the most premium publishers, with the richness of Oath data at scale. The halo effect of having your ads run on premium content sites definitely drives consumer behavior. We have seen in studies that 75% of consumers feel brands are accountable for the content that the ads are adjacent to. That’s 3 out of 4 of your potential customers.
Think of being able to amplify your brand across the homepages and mobile apps of premium properties like HuffPost, Yahoo Sports, Yahoo Finance, AOL and many more. In addition, advertisers are able to reach specific audiences with the quality of our data signals like mail, search, registration data and interest signals. There are little to no partners in the native space with that combination of comprehensive data and premium impressions at scale.
Where do you see the digital marketing landscape for eCommerce in the next few years?
Personalization has been a focus I’m most interested in. We’re trying to answer the question for “How can we provide as tailored of a shopping experience digitally, as you can do in-store?”.
With this in mind, over the next years, I expect a greater marriage between key advertiser data points and product feeds to automate the personalization process and make it stronger than ever.
What is the book (or books) you’ve given most as a gift, and why? Or what are one to three books that have greatly influenced your life?
Man’s Search For Meaning, By Viktor Frankl: This is a book I read once a year that has helped in many situations of change or uncertainty. There are things in this world that are beyond our control, but one we can always control is our attitude or perspective. Through this, tremendous feats can be accomplished.
What advice would you give to a smart, driven college student about to enter digital marketing? What advice should they ignore?
Build your network, stay on top of what’s current, and most importantly….reach out to people in the industry. Don’t be afraid to ask for help, advice, some time, or even a job. Everything is cyclical and you’ll eventually provide the same value later down the line to someone else.
Brian Roizen is the Cofounder and Chief Architect of Feedonomics, a full-service feed optimization platform that optimizes product data for hundreds of channels. He has been featured on numerous podcasts and eCommerce webinars, and regularly contributes to Search Engine Land and other industry-leading blogs. Brian graduated summa cum laude from UCLA with both a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering.
