The summer was retail-focused, but fall was more of a mixed bag. Amazon strategies, AI-powered personal trainers and blockchain made up your favorites from Q4.
Can you believe 2017 is almost over? Neither can we. But as it winds down, we’re reflecting on some of ClickZ‘s top articles from the past year. We’ve spent this week walking down memory lane and sharing our most popular posts, the top-read from each month.
Earlier this year, ClickZ Intelligence and Catalyst, part of GroupM, surveyed B2C marketers and consumers to gain deeper insights about how people use Amazon. We put out a report, The Age of Amazon: Maximizing the B2C Marketing Opportunity, and a complementary series because there was just too much to put into one article.
The first part was all about Amazon’s road to dominance, which makes this stat all the more staggering: Only 17% of marketers have a clearly-defined Amazon strategy. And one-third of them don’t even realize there’s an opportunity, though we suspect that number will be significantly lower by this time next year.
You’ve definitely heard of Bitcoin. And according to Never Stop Marketing CEO Jeremy Epstein, it’s just the tip of the iceberg. Beneath the surface, the blockchain, the technology that makes Bitcoin possible, has huge potential to change the marketing industry.
How so? Blockchain could disrupt the way consumers feel about data and as a result, brands. Individuals could control access to their identity, which would shift the value proposition. Rather than creating personalized experiences with owned data, brands could use blockchain to help customers use and interpret their own data.
A few weeks ago, I attended The AI Summit, an event with an overwhelmingly good agenda of speakers. My strategy was to bypass the IBMs of the world to hear from brands we wouldn’t necessarily associate with AI. Like Planet Fitness.
With New Year’s right around the corner, this is a great time for gyms. But slightly further around the corner is February 9: the “fitness cliff,” when people tend to lose motivation and stop going. Planet Fitness plans to combat that with a personalized AI-powered digital coach.
