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Thanks for subscribing to The Cache - a weekly summary of the most important stories, trends, & commentary in eCommerce marketing, curated by Rob Bettis.

Thanks for subscribing to The Cache - a weekly summary of the most important stories, trends, & commentary in eCommerce marketing, curated by Rob Bettis.

More than most, this week played host to two ever-unfolding storylines - an analytics story and a social story.

First, we will look at the upcoming Facebook boycott.

Thanks for subscribing to The Cache - a weekly summary of the most important stories, trends, & commentary in eCommerce marketing, curated by Rob Bettis.

Thanks for subscribing to The Cache - a weekly summary of the most important stories, trends, & commentary in eCommerce marketing, curated by Rob Bettis.

Thanks for subscribing to The Cache - a weekly summary of the most important stories, trends, & commentary in eCommerce marketing, curated by Rob Bettis.

Thanks for subscribing to The Cache - a weekly summary of the most important stories, trends, & commentary in eCommerce marketing, curated by Rob Bettis.

Thanks for subscribing to The Cache - a weekly summary of the most important stories, trends, & commentary in eCommerce marketing, curated by Rob Bettis.

sharecropper: a tenant farmer especially in the southern U.S. who is provided with credit for seed, tools, living quarters, and food, who works the land, and who receives an agreed share of the value of the crop minus charges

In 2007, Facebook released Ads. Folks who poured significant time and attention into growing their brand on Facebook where instantly exposed as sharecroppers. Their audience was not their own, rather Facebook’s audience.

Thanks for subscribing to The Cache - a weekly summary of the most important stories, trends, & commentary in eCommerce marketing, curated by Rob Bettis.

Thanks for subscribing to The Cache - a weekly summary of the most important stories, trends, & commentary in eCommerce marketing, curated by Rob Bettis.

Thanks for subscribing to The Cache - a weekly summary of the most important stories, trends, & commentary in eCommerce marketing, curated by Rob Bettis.

Thanks for subscribing to The Cache - a weekly summary of the most important stories, trends, & commentary in eCommerce marketing, curated by Rob Bettis.

Thanks for subscribing to The Cache - a weekly summary of the most important stories, trends, & commentary in eCommerce marketing, curated by Rob Bettis.

Thanks for subscribing to The Cache - a weekly summary of the most important stories, trends, & commentary in eCommerce marketing, curated by Rob Bettis.

Thanks for subscribing to The Cache - a weekly summary of the most important stories, trends, & commentary in eCommerce marketing, curated by Rob Bettis.

Thanks for subscribing to The Cache - a weekly summary of the most important stories, trends, & commentary in eCommerce marketing, curated by Rob Bettis.

Thanks for subscribing to The Cache - a weekly summary of the most important stories, trends, & commentary in eCommerce marketing, curated by Rob Bettis.

Thanks for subscribing to The Cache - a weekly summary of the most important stories, trends, & commentary in eCommerce marketing, curated by Rob Bettis.

Thanks for subscribing to The Cache - a weekly summary of the most important stories, trends, & commentary in eCommerce marketing, curated by Rob Bettis.

If you have seen a recent surge in conversions being reported in Facebook, you may have fallen victim to experienced a relatively new feature in Facebook - Automatic Events.

As many advertisers know, when you setup Facebook’s tracking pixel on your site, you define a handful of conversions. This typically include checkouts, abandoned carts, newsletter signups, etc.

Thanks for subscribing to The Cache - a weekly summary of the most important stories, trends, & commentary in eCommerce marketing, curated by Rob Bettis.

What’s a pirate retailer’s favorite letter?

...ARR

Thanks for subscribing to The Cache - a weekly summary of the most important stories, trends, & commentary in eCommerce marketing, curated by Rob Bettis.

Amazon has somewhat famously struggled to manage the scale of its marketplace, especially in governing its third-party sellers. With another damning study released this week (see below), when will ‘curation as a service’ come to retail? When will a store begin to offer products solely based on their value, customer satisfaction, or quality?

What if you could shop a store that vets - like Wirecutter or Consumer Reports vets - everything it sells and only offers its customers the best?

Thanks for subscribing to The Cache - a weekly summary of the most important stories, trends, & commentary in eCommerce marketing, curated by Rob Bettis.

I have a problem. It’s a maker problem.

When you are a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. But when you create digital assets as a profession, most problems need a new digital asset. And that is the case with this newsletter.

Data, data, data.

For the ten years I have managed paid advertising online, that has been the mantra - the superpower.

But lost in the buzz of machine learning and artificial intelligence, we have perhaps overlooked a very important casualty: data. One of the moment’s subtle storylines is the lack of data advertisers are getting from the big tech companies via their new products. And I’m not talking about Cambridge Analytica-type data. I’m talking about run-of-the-mill targeting data. Data that answers the question, “Where are our ads showing and why?”

The writing was on the wall with Google’s new ‘Smart’ Display & Shopping campaigns. Kirk Williams has documented his displeasure with Smart Shopping late last year. And this week, Ginny Marvin shined a light on more obscurity coming from Google’s soon-to-be-released Discovery campaigns: