WHY ALL MARKETERS STARTED TO HATE APPLE YESTERDAY.

 Are you aware that the entire marketing industry is upset with Apple´s latest version of the iPhone and iPad Operating System iOS 11?

This ties well together with what I have been talking about in the previous part of the “Future of E-commerce” article series https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/future-e-commerce-part-1-consumer-relationship-karl-lillrud/

In that previous article, I described the alternative ways to attract visitors back to the store but let’s spend a few seconds going through the concept of tracking ads again.

When you browse around the web you do just that, your browse a lot and the decision to make a purchase is not something that is made without some consideration.

We, consumers, like to think twice before we make a purchase rather than buying everything that is displayed to us online. The psychology around this is something that I have described more in the previous article already so I won’t spend more time on that just now.

But as you browse around the web I am sure that you have seen the message saying that “As you use this website you accept that we save a cookie on your computer”.

Not everybody knew this but it’s an EU law declaring that any website that uses cookies need to inform the visitor of the website about this and what information is recorded and in what way they use cookies. The law was declared in May 2011.

The intention with the law was to decrease the widely spread methods of gathering intel about the visitors without the user being aware of it using cookies from different services and combining the data in these multiple sources to create a very detailed view of who the visitor to the site is. Enabling the store to make assumptions about your desires and finetune the communication to fit those desires. Now that’s if it was done right which was not the case in almost every situation.

What is a cookie?

A small side track to explain this and to make sure that you can follow this article through and be educated on the subject.

Any website can create a small file called a cookie that is saved on your computer. The cookie can be saved for a maximum time of one year in your computer (if you follow the EU Cookie law). It's therefore important for the service to hit you again within that period of time so that they can renew the “lease time” and don’t lose the grip on you.

A cookie can only be read by the service that “own” the cookie (the domain that created the cookie file). So, for example, Zara.com cannot read the cookies saved by hm.com and vice versa.

The real difference since before the EU law is that the sites now need to inform the user about the use of cookies but they are still allowed to act almost in the same way as long as you the user are informed about it. Note that you don’t have an option to not accept the cookie banner on the sites they are only there for information and not to give you an actual option to not accept that cookies are created by the website on your computer. If you like to disable cookies from a website you would have to disable the use of cookies in your web browser settings entirely which would make many websites behave a bit strange and making it so that you would have to log in every time you visit a website that requires a login as the cookies are used to make your login sticky.

In reality, that means that as you move around the web, almost every website that you visit have several cookies saved to your computer recording your visit to the website locally on your computer and pointing out what pages on that website you had a look at and much more.

These services are Google Analytics that tracks your visit so that the store owners know how many visitors they have and what they do on the site but also if there are any serious errors displayed to the visitor that needs to be fixed like dead links for example.

Now we get to the juicy part, other services that use cookies are the ad networks and there are a ton of them out there.

They focus on collecting information about each of the products you view in the stores you visit. The cookie is “owned” by the ad network (service provider) that the store chose to cooperate with enabling them to read the cookie from any of the other sites that use their service.

Now as you move away from the store, for example visiting your preferred news site, that site for sure like to make a few bucks on your visit by displaying ads on their website. The sites are then paid for each user that the ad is displayed to and are also paid a lot more if you actually click on the ad. Nowadays we automatically filter the ads away as our brain has become trained to take in the information that we are looking for and disregard the rest.

This seems harmless at first as we understand the concept behind ads and that every business must make a living.

But we tend to get distracted when something relevant to us are displayed within the content that we were looking for. Let me explain that for a second, for example, you are reading an article about the latest environmental challenges and as you read your eyes focus on the article. But as you read your eyes pick up an image that gets you wondering away, it’s an image of that thing you looked at an hour or a week before. The distraction happens as the ad shows both the product image and the stores logo, both being relevant to you but not at all relevant to the article that your reading.

This is called retargeting ads or more describing tracking ads, where the ad network reuse that cookie in your computer to display the ad of the product that you have shown an interest to in any and every website that uses the same ad network.

The studies show that this is highly negative on customer relations but at the same time a conversion booster, which numbers do you think the ad networks display to the store owners… For sure the positive sales numbers and obviously not the negative impact on their customer relationship.

But the problem is not only that it causes negative customer relationships but customers feel that they are being stalked, that the stores intrude on their personal space when displaying ads on sites all over the web.

Let’s just play with the idea, that you for your wedding anniversary use the family iPad one evening and browse online to buy something nice for your wife. You look through a couple of products and then leave the iPad to rest. The day after you pick up the iPad or your iPhone and go to your daily news site or you open Facebook and everywhere you move around where you previously have seen other ads you now see the items you were looking at as a gift for your wife.

When your wife the next day sit down and use the iPad she sees ads of the same items more or less everywhere online making the element of surprise disappear when you present her with that gift on your anniversary day.

Yes, because this is the sad part, you browsed around several stores for that item. But as you just like most people use a price comparison sites to find the item at the best price and found one site where you decide to first look at the item and then return to it and actually buy it. It could even be that you looked at it first in one store and then purchased the item from the same store but still, you see the adds trying to convince you to buy the item that you already purchased.

But the damage was at that point in time already done as you actually did look at a product and the ad network have then saved a cookie with this information on your computer.

So even as you decided to buy the product they keep bombarding you with ads the next coming weeks. Making you as a consumer frustrated. But it would also make the store frustrated if they knew that they are paying the ad networks to display the ads to customers that they already sold the product to.

Apple decided that they go about this on their own, to protect your online personal security rather than wait for some global law to be agreed on between all the countries of the world, which is highly unlikely.

So now you don’t need to worry about those tracking ads and the ad networks cookies any longer while you use your Safari on your Apple iPhone or iPad.

The ads are what many sites online have been basing their income on, the ads that are displayed using these ad networks and to make the ads relevant to the user they have been using this technology to “retarget” you with the products that you already have shown an interest to.

For sure this is what the e-commerce sites marketing departments have spent a lot of money relying on to generate sales for them.

The ad network stands there with their entire technology being banned by Apple from one day to another.

It’s the end of an era of online marketing and the beginning of a new one.

It’s time for the stores to start working with their customers with an honest and customer first initiative using technologies like the one Lizer Group provide.

I can understand their frustration in this but according to me, and this I have been talking about for years. You have to treat the customer with respect and always focus on what’s in the customers best interest.

That’s the core of the work we do at Lizer Group. By making the customer happy we generate more sales for the thousands of e-commerce sites that have started to use our technology.

We have never and will never use tracking cookies to communicate with the consumer without their consent, we use honest methods of communication where we collect what products the consumer is interested in and this is being done with the consumer's approval.

Lizer Group supports you as you now are forced by Apple to find new methods to communicate with your customers. Replacing the entire tracking ads industry standard with a smarter one that enables you to both generate more sales, understand more about your visitors and improve your long-term relationship with your customers rather than damaging it.

But this article is not about our technology so if you like to understand more about this disruptive technology just send me a message.

Talk to us at Lizer Group about how you can create a customer friendly strategy and what elements you should include building long-term marketing strategy.

I hope this article gave you the insight to help you get started on improving your conversion, and that you found the answers you were looking for. I am here to help you so don’t be shy just reach out to me and we can have a chat about your current situation.

If you found interest in this article I believe that you also will be interested in reading the other article series that I'm writing about the future of e-commerce, you can find it here --> https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/future-e-commerce-part-1-consumer-relationship-karl-lillrud

I'm flattered that you have read this far and as I'm sure you can see I have put a lot of effort into making this as valuable and as educational as possible for you.

Since I started writing these articles I have been overwhelmed with positive comments when I meet with readers in person, but perhaps I won't meet you for a long time, so I like to ask you for two things:

I love feedback, just hit the like button or write your feedback either in a personal message or in the comment field. It could simply be that you agree with me, or you can point out things that you like me to elaborate on or perhaps what you hope to read about in the next article.

These articles are meant to help and educate you but if you think I'm shooting too high or too low I need to know so that I can finetune the aim for the next article a little so that it fits you perfectly.

I want your help to spread the word, I have been working in this business for many years already but I rarely see these type of articles, and to me, that's an alarm bell going off. The things I talk about are to a large extent things that almost everyone in the e-commerce business should know about but most people don't. So help me help your friends, help me spread this article so that we start solving these major problems and if you're interested in talking about it more I am here, just give me a call.

If you like me to come and speak at an event, a seminar, a school, or in your office just reach out to me.

About the author:

Karl Lillrud is a serial entrepreneur with 21 years of experience from this segment. Founder of one of the first interior design e-commerce sites in the Nordic countries where he back in early 2000 learned about the many challenges that e-commerce struggle with even today.

That's why Karl decided to help companies overcome these hurdles and focus on what matters most, keeping customers happy and helping the companies improve their market position. Being a public speaker and entrepreneurial mentor Karl love to share his experience and knowledge with the one goal to help others reach their success easier and faster.

Source:

https://www.cookielaw.org/the-cookie-law/

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/mar/31/facebook-tracks-all-visitors-breaching-eu-law-report

https://marketingland.com/apple-safari-intelligent-ad-tracking-what-we-know-216865

http://www.whatarecookies.com/view.asphttps://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748703467304575383203092034876

https://www.aboutcookies.org/

https://marketingland.com/apple-safari-intelligent-ad-tracking-what-we-know-216865