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Several years ago, the word “multichannel” made its debut in the world and focused on the different channels across several touchpoints to meet the customer’s needs anyway, anytime, and anywhere (Arianee, 2022). This term has further developed into “omnichannel”, which introduces the seamless integration of all these channels and puts the customer in the center of it all. The ideal omnichannel approach creates a synergy between social medial, websites, online shopping, brick & mortar stores, mobile applications and e-mail (Arianee, 2022). This will only be enhanced with the rise of several disruptive technologies, such as the Metaverse, Non-Fungible-Tokens (NFTs), and Web3.0.

Imagine the following scenario: it is a very rainy day but you need to shop for a dress for your friend’s wedding. You remember that you saw an advertisement on Instagram of a boutique that looked very nice and wanted to visit. Through the Metaverse, you visit the virtual boutique to look for something nice. You find a flowery dress that you like a lot, but you want to try it on. You can simply try on the dress in the comfort of your own home, by projecting the dress on yourself in the mirror through augmented reality. You want to have a second opinion and send a picture of the dress to your best friend via Facebook Messenger. As your friend is also in love with the dress, you decide to buy it by purchasing an NFT-token of the dress in the virtual store. The next day, you go to the physical store and show the token to pick up your dress. A week later, you receive an email from the boutique to ask you about the experience.

This is just a prime example of how a company can integrate an omnichannel approach by leveraging new technologies. The Metaverse allows the opportunity to merge physical and virtual reality and revolutionizes the way that companies and brand can interact with their customers (Coignard, 2022). Through Web3.0, users can effortlessly and seamlessly transfer between different marketplaces and virtual worlds to trade their digital assets such as NFTs (Diconium, 2022). Although there are still some uncertainties on how these technologies can be implemented, on thing is for sure: the shopping experience will drastically change in the very near future!

References

Arianee. (2022, March 9). The future of omnichannel retail, powered by NFTs | Digital Assets for Customer Relationships 3.0. Retrieved October 15, 2022, from Arianee website: https://www.arianee.org/blog/the-future-of-omnichannel-retail-nfts

Coignard, S. (2022, March 17). The Metaverse: Where Virtual and Physical Retail Fuse. Retrieved from Advertising Week website: https://advertisingweek.com/the-metaverse-where-virtual-and-physical-retail-fuse/

Diconium. (2022, April 29). Get ahead of the competition: Web3 and the metaverse redefine the omnichannel journey. Retrieved October 15, 2022, from www.linkedin.com website: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/get-ahead-competition-web3-metaverse-redefine-omnichannel-journey-/?trk=organization-update-content_share-article

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The world of online advertising is drastically changing with the end of third-party (3P) cookies. The move by Google to remove 3P cookies on their Chrome browser is the result of an increasing need for privacy of users.

In general, users are quite unaware of how their data is used by major tech companies, who are also sharing this data to third parties for advertising purposes. The online advertising industry is extremely dependent on the availability of this data, as companies mostly leverage third-party data and have little or no first-party data (Brodherson, Broitman, Macdonald, & Royaux, 2021). This means that advertising companies are left in the dark on the demographic and behavioral insights which they use to create segments and to target audiences on an individual level (Fou, 2021). However, to what extent is targeting down to the individual level actually worth it for marketers? The data quality at individual level is usually quite low and Dr. Augustine Fou (2020) even shows that adding more targeting parameters results in a significantly lower accuracy.

Although this move by Google has severe implications for several companies and online advertising agencies, they now need to focus on redesigning their data solutions to create their own ecosystem of first-party data, which will become a key element in their future digital strategies (Brodherson et al., 2021). This will also bring a lot of opportunities to companies and brands that value their customer privacy and focus on building customer relationships (Struik, n.d.). The companies can make meaningful, individual connections on a human level with their customer, by building trust and correctly managing the customer identities. Moreover, this will also elevate the customer experience at every touch point (Struik, n.d.).

Despite the challenges ahead for companies and advertising agencies that depend on third-party data, it is time for them to start looking forward and reap the opportunities that appear in this disruption. When done well, these companies will actually be better off with their own ecosystem of first-party data, while it simultaneously brings more power to the user regarding their own data and privacy.

References

Brodherson, M., Broitman, A., Macdonald, C., & Royaux, S. (2021, April 12). The demise of third-party cookies and identifiers | McKinsey. Retrieved from www.mckinsey.com website: https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/growth-marketing-and-sales/our-insights/the-demise-of-third-party-cookies-and-identifiers

Fou, A. (2021, March 27). The “Cookieless Future” And What It Means For Marketers. Retrieved October 15, 2022, from Forbes website: https://www.forbes.com/sites/augustinefou/2021/03/27/the-cookieless-future-and-what-it-means-for-marketers/?sh=7c1d06526808

Fou, D. A. (2020, September 10). How Accurate Is Programmatic Ad Targeting? Retrieved October 15, 2022, from Forbes website: https://www.forbes.com/sites/augustinefou/2020/09/10/how-accurate-is-programmatic-ad-targeting/?sh=140ab4ca2523

Struik, N. (n.d.). First-party data is key in a new era for digital advertising | Customer & Marketing. Retrieved from Deloitte Netherlands website: https://www2.deloitte.com/nl/nl/pages/customer-and-marketing/articles/first-party-data-is-key-in-a-new-era-for-digital-advertising-c.html