As privacy rules make it tougher to track individuals, marketers will be hungrily eyeing contextual advertising alternatives.  The gigantic audience for digital games is especially enticing.  TV ad tech company Simulmedia is serving up playerWON, which will deliver TV-style ads on game consoles and PCs.  To avoid annoying game players, the ads will be served only with permission and in exchange for in-game rewards.

This pair of retail studies packs in a month’s worth of obvious.  Retail Touch Points  and Euromonitor agree that ecommerce increased during the pandemic, free shipping became even more important, and supply chain issues were a big headache.  You knew that.  But did you know that Euromonitor found 20% of consumers would implant a microchip in their finger to making buying easier?

Martech keeps taking larger bites out of marketing budgets: 17.3% last year, 19.9% this year, 23.5% next year, and 30.9% five years from now, according to the latest CMO Survey. This despite barely more than half (56.4%) of current tools being used and nearly half (48.8%) of the survey respondents reporting worse-than-expected results. Oddly enough, marketers rate selecting marketing technologies as the thing they do best.