Headlines Tuesday painted a picture of a booming U.S. retail market: Amazon's well-covered Prime Day(s) generated an estimated $5.8 billion of sales and the Commerce Department's retail sales report showed an especially strong reading for June.
Yes, but: A deeper dive into the data shows retail sales growth is slowing, with the all-important online component — the major source of growth, as brick-and-mortar sales struggle — cooling notably.
Netflix reports Q2 earnings at market close tomorrow. Analysts don't expect looming competition from streaming competitors to threaten its Q2 growth targets of 0.3 million domestic subscriber adds and 4.7 million international subscriber adds this quarter.
A new report from GroupM's Brian Wieser, one of the top advertising industry analysts, finds that large online marketplaces account for a majority of e-commerce activity and are growing as a percentage of e-commerce activity at a faster rate than direct-to-consumer (D2C) brands.
Why it matters: Following e-commerce trends is important in understanding what shapes the media industry because of the ripple effect it creates in the types of advertising growth.
The video ad market for politics is expected to grow by $2 billion between 2018 and 2020, a 50% year-over-year increase, according to new estimates from Cross Screen Media and Advertising Analytics.
Why it matters: In total, political ad spend is expected to approach roughly $6 billion during the 2020 cycle accounting, according to Kantar. That means that political video ads will make up roughly 4.5% of the total U.S. video ad market and 17% of its entire growth, per Cross Screen Media CEO Michael Beach.
A new survey of 9,100 retail investors in 25 countries from investment bank Natixis finds that many are in need of a "reality check."
Between the lines: The survey showed retail investors feel especially confident in their return expectations, with long-term return expectations rising to 10.9% (above inflation) from 9.8% in 2018. However, a contingent of U.S. financial advisors also surveyed by Natixis in 2018 think an annual return of 6.3% is realistic.
Flipboard is adding advertising veteran David Bell to its board. Bell will replace venture capitalist Danny Rimer, who has been on Flipboard's three-person board for ten years.
Why it matters: The shakeup comes as the news reading app company prepares to transition more of its advertising business from display advertising to native advertising. Bell is considered a titan of the ad industry and could help Flipboard as it tries to get more serious about making money.
The Dodo, a digital publisher focused on animal content, is launching a new kids vertical called Dodo Kid that will live across multiple channels, as well as a commerce line and book publishing.
Why it matters: Advertisers are looking for more vetted, kid-friendly content that can live on big video platforms. User-generated kids content has proven to be problematic in many cases, because the creators of the content are often unknown and the videos can sometimes be creepy, dangerous or not actually suitable for children.
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