Five things worth sharing from the last week or so, brought to you by a different member of the Browser Media team every Friday.
This week’s My Five is by Ashleigh.
1. Colin vs. Cuthbert – the final chapter
Way back in April 2021 Ali wrote about the feud between Aldi and M&S regarding their beloved caterpillar cakes and the fight has finally concluded.
The supermarket rivals actually came to an agreement out of the courts, the details of which have not been formally announced, but it appears to mean the end of Cuthbert as we know him. M&S said, “The objective of the claim was to protect the [intellectual property] in our Colin the Caterpillar cake and we are very pleased with the outcome.”
Aldi announced the news with this tweet:
Getting out early on good behaviour, keep an eye out for Cuthy B this Spring ?? x #FreeCuthbert
— Aldi Stores UK (@AldiUK) February 1, 2022
Even though Aldi may have lost Cuthbert as he was known, they have received some great publicity with their #FreeCuthbert campaign. And better yet, Cuthbert will not be completely forgotten, as fans can expect to see him, in his new guise, this Spring.
2. New auto-tagging for free Merchant Center listings
This is great news in terms of tracking, reporting and measurements as Google Merchant Center (GMC) users will now be able to see traffic coming from their free listings (free product listings and free local product listings) in Google Analytics (GA).
Make sure you take advantage of this by visiting the “Conversion settings” in GMC and enabling auto-tagging. This will add a parameter called “result id” to the URLs of your products, which can then be tracked in GA.
For more information see here: https://support.google.com/merchants/answer/11593824
3. Try before you buy with new Pinterest AR
This week also saw the introduction of “Try On for Home Decor” from Pinterest.
The new AR feature allows users to see an item of furniture in their home before purchasing it and is already live for a few brands, including Wayfair.
This feature, alongside its ‘Try On’ feature for beauty products, just further strengthens its shopping experience, making it more attractive for advertisers. Pinterest says “Pinners are 5x more likely to purchase from Try On-enabled Pins than standard Pins.” Hopefully, we’ll see this feature for other items too, like jewellery for example.
4. Is it all over for Facebook?
Meta announced this week that Facebook’s number of daily active users (DAUs) fell for the first time since the social media platform was launched, 18 years ago.
DAUs fell from 1.930bn in Q3 2021 to 1.929bn in Q4 2021. This, together with a slump in advertising revenue, due to competition from the likes of TikTok and YouTube, has seen Facebook’s share price drop by 20% (equating to $200bn (£147.5bn) in stock market value). Yikes!
With younger users leaving the platform in favour of the new more “hip” social channels (ie. TikTok) and also being stung by Apple’s privacy updates, it feels like Facebook is going to have to pull something out of the bag to stay at the top.
5. Adidas builds tennis court out of recycled plastic in Great Barrier Reef
Sports brand, Adidas, and environmental organisation, Parley, have joined forces to create a floating tennis court in the Australian ocean, Great Barrier Reef marine park, out of recycled plastics.
Trying to highlight the issue of plastics in our oceans, the pair have built this court, which includes the strapline: ‘Plastic waste is a problem. Innovation is our solution.’
However, people do not seem to agree:
https://twitter.com/xvson19/status/1487849378421391362
https://twitter.com/vox_ciudadana/status/1487783820019519492
Have a great weekend folks!
