The feature allows brands to create high purchase intent audiences, and export them to ad networks.
Shopify is offering targeting tools in a post-iOS 14 world. (www.flickr.com)
Shopify announced a new feature on Tuesday that’s designed to help merchants more effectively find new customers using advertising platforms at a time when it's getting harder and more costly to do so.
Shopify Audiences provides key digital marketing data that has become less freely available following privacy changes made by Apple this year. It works like this:
Attracting new customers is the lifeblood of a consumer brand, and direct-to-consumer businesses rose over a decade by leveraging powerful digital advertising tools from platforms like Facebook to scale.
But this well-trodden advertising route has been getting rockier in recent years. As the number of consumer goods companies went up, ad space on platforms like Facebook became more limited and expensive, driving up customer acquisition costs. At the same time, Apple’s privacy-centered changes that rolled out with iOS 14.5 in April 2021 decreased the number of users opting in to provide the data that powers mobile advertising. Shopify said Audiences aims to address these issues.
“We know that independent merchants may have to pay twice as much to find a new customer as they did a year ago. In fact, one merchant told us their customer acquisition cost climbed 80% over the last year," said Kaz Nejatian, VP of Product at Shopify, in a statement. “We've also seen merchants’ return on ad spend drop, reflecting the growing difficulty of using digital marketing to find new buyers. That’s why we’re launching Shopify Audiences to fix it—without compromising privacy standards.”
Shopify’s new feature aims to provide a key piece of the digital marketing equation: an audience that has a high purchase intent for a product. With data on intent, platforms can target the users that are more likely to buy a product. Shopify is using machine learning to assemble these audiences using its own platform – which has data from its 1.7 million merchants – and tailor them to a merchant. Shopify Audiences “leverages our unique perspective on purchasing intent from supporting merchants and their buyers,” the company wrote in a news release. Then, it exports the audience to a brand’s preferred advertising network, where they can run “look-a-like” campaigns to target people who match the profile of the user lists generated by Audiences.
The company is accounting for privacy with this feature: merchants can opt out of sharing their data, and the company states that Facebook deletes data after it is exported and matched to its records.
Currently available to Shopify Plus members, the feature is currently available for Facebook and Instagram. Meta properties have been important platforms for DTC brands. In turn, Facebook has taken a big hit in digital advertising post-iOS 14.5, reporting earlier this year that the privacy moves would cost the company $10 billion.
At a later date, Shopify plans to make Audiences available for TikTok, Snap, Pinterest, Microsoft Advertising, Criteo, and others.
Shopify said the Audiences feature is designed to help brands increase conversion rates on their ads, and generate better Return on Ad Spend (ROAS).
Seeking to address another area where iOS 14 brought big and challenging changes, Shopify is also looking to provide accurate attribution with the new feature. The company said it would provide measurement at the audience level, rather than at the campaign level.
“Having a transparent attribution model is essential so that merchants can have a high degree of trust about what marketing tactics are driving conversion and deploy their spend accordingly,” Shopify wrote.
Shopify has long offered the tools to help brands set up online stores where shoppers could browse and buy items. Under this model, it was up to brands to turn to platforms like Facebook to attract customers to those websites. Audiences is one sign of Shopify making a move to help brands not only man the store, but go out and get shoppers into it, as well.
Business Insider first reported on the development of the new feature last year, and characterized it as part of a big push into advertising by Shopify.
"I think it's the first step to Shopify building out a much more robust advertising offering for their merchants — it's the low-hanging fruit of interesting data to help better advertise on platforms," an executive told Business Insider at the time.
One outgrowth of the iOS 14.5 shifts was a move by retailers to build out advertising networks on their own platforms. The prior report indicates Audiences might be a building block for Shopify to make a retail media move of its own.
There are questions about where such a network would live on Shopify, as individual brand websites don't offer the same kind of traffic pull that usually leads to advertising. But as Ben Thompson of Stratechery wrote earlier this year, the attribution challenges of the post iOS 14.5-landscape – namely, determining who sees an ad – could present an opportunity:
Here Shopify’s ability to act on behalf of the entire Shopify network provides an opening: instead of being an advertising seller at scale, like Facebook, Shopify the company would become an advertising buyer at scale. Armed with its perfect knowledge of conversions it could run probabilistically-targeted campaigns that are much more precise than anyone else, using every possible parameter available to advertisers on Facebook or anywhere else, and over time build sophisticated cohorts that map to certain types of products and purchase patterns.
To be clear, Shopify hasn't detailed any plans, or addressed whether this is the concept it's building. But it's worth reflecting on the fact that Audiences shows some symmetry with what's presented.
For one, the feature's ability to assemble merchant-specific audiences geared around particular items sounds like it could be at least a step toward building "sophisticated cohorts that map to certain types of products and purchase patterns."
There is also a sign that Shopify views its network as a strength that can be harnessed. In its news release, Shopify writes that Audiences "taps the collective power of our platform so merchants can reach new customers more effectively."
It might be a different approach from where Shopify started, but it would still be arming the rebels.
The reversals offer a cautionary tale for executives weighing a classic dilemma: Build or buy?
There’s no doubt that the pandemic ecommerce boom brought massive operational growth across retail. The investment that retailers made to keep up with demand ushered in lasting transformation to fulfillment operations, as we’ve noted in this series.
Yet it’s also true that not everyone can be Amazon. Some of the big supply chain bets made during the pandemic didn’t pan out, especially when ecommerce growth returned to a more normalized trajectory in 2022.
In particular, Shopify and American Eagle Outfitters (AEO) made high-profile moves to scale logistics operations, and even made clear that they were setting out to take on the giants in doing so.
The companies occupy different parts of retail. Shopify is a software company that helps brands run ecommerce, while AEO is a brick-and-mortar-based apparel retailer better known as a mall staple than a digital innovator.
But during the wild ride of the pandemic years, both outfits made bets that they could build logistics operations that would attract small and medium-sized brands looking for an alternative to Amazon, and spent millions to acquire companies that would help them get there.
Alongside the investment, they talked like they wanted to got big.
As AEO COO Michael Rempell put it at Shoptalk in 2022, "There's a supply chain revolution happening and we want to lead it...We think it’s leveling the playing field and allowing like-minded companies to compete with Amazon, Walmart, Target – the biggest retailers in the world.”
In 2023, executives at both companies are singing a different tune. Shopify sold the $2 billion logistics acquisition Deliverr to Flexport. Meanwhile, AEO said its acquisition of Quiet Logistics wasn’t meeting expectations, and backed off an aggressive move to bring other retailers into the fold.
Together, these reversals represent a cautionary tale for retailers weighing how to scale ecommerce to keep up with future growth:
Buying your way into a market may provide a head start, but it’s still a long road to the top.
Let’s take a closer look at both deals to learn more:
Shopify has long been a leading software choice for brands looking to run the frontend of commerce. The tools built by the company and the apps available from its ecosystem of developers provide everything that’s needed to start and scale the demand generation and selling side of ecommerce.
But ecommerce is not just a matter of lining up the bits. It also requires moving atoms. As it sought to offer a more complete ecommerce platform, Shopify lacked its own tools for the backend of ecommerce such as processing goods and delivering them to customers.
There’s good reason for this. Operating fulfillment and delivery is a different business than building software. It requires warehouses and workers and boxes and trucks. Still, it’s an area where there’s a massive opportunity to make life easier for brands. Amazon’s FBA program showed how providing storage, fulfillment and delivery for third-party sellers could serve as a critical connecting point to deepen their ties to Amazon. These sellers may be independent, but the fact that they are reliant on Amazon’s facilities to provide the two-day shipping and free returns that customers expect make it an attractive and convenient way to sell there. Once you’re in, it’s tough to quit.
For its part, Shopify didn’t set out to build a sprawling logistics network. But it did make moves to provide full-service fulfillment. Initially, the Shopify Fulfillment Network had several warehouses. This stood to become supercharged when it acquired Deliverr for $2.1 billion in May 2022. The companies seemed to be a fit. While Deliverr owned warehouses, it had a software-centered approach to logistics that prized predictive analytics and placing inventory close to demand. Shopify executives talked about how it would be an “asset-light” network. Translation: We aren’t building an Amazon-like network, even as we compete with them.
But the move to acquire Deliverr was still expensive, clocking in at Shopify’s largest-ever deal. It also happened to arrive as ecommerce fortunes were shifting amid the return to stores and the weight of inflation on discretionary budgets. A couple of months after it made the acquisition, Shopify laid off 10% of its workforce as CEO Tobi Lutke admitted that the company’s bet on explosive growth for years ahead “didn’t pay off.”
This ultimately presaged a monthslong period of recalibration at the company. By May of 2023, it emerged with more layoffs, this time of 20% of the workforce. Executives spoke of a recommitment to priorities on the frontend of ecommerce, and Lutke disavowed “side quests.” Underscoring the fact that logistics fit into the latter category, Shopify sold Deliverr to Flexport just a year after buying it.
To be sure, Shopfiy will continue to benefit from the logistics network as the preferred partner of Flexport. And the fulfillment operation that Shopify started may still be built out to scale, especially with former Amazon commerce chief Dave Clark at the helm of Flexport. But the fact that Shopify turned away from this approach was ultimately another admission that the bet didn’t pay off. At the end of the day, Shopify runs a software company focused on the bits side of ecommerce. It will continue to leave the atoms side to others.
American Eagle was perhaps a more surprising entrant into the logistics arms race. But as it transformed its own supply chain to make ecommerce a more integrated part of its operation, the retailer saw an opportunity to provide logistics for other brands and retailers, as well.
In its own way, this was also a lesson from Amazon: Build a logistics operation, and it can be opened up to move from cost center to growth engine.
AEO did not lack in boldness and panache as it set out to apply these lessons. It acquired Quiet Logistics for $360 million as it set out to enable next-day and same-day shipping, and AirTerra in a move to aggregate packages.
AEO set out to own its supply chain, allowing it to make moves to save costs and implement omnichannel approaches that would bring store associates into the ecommerce mix, and add efficiency. Ultimately, the retailer decided that acquisitions would help to achieve the scale that was necessary during the pandemic.
In turn, this “hyperscale” would put it in a position to create a new kind of model, EVP and Chief Supply Chain Officer Shekar Natarajan argued. He spoke of creating a “frenemy network” where retailers banded together to create the large networks that the Amazons and Walmarts of the world could build on their own.
By April of 2023, Natarajan was no longer with the company. COO Michael Rempell told analysts that Quiet Logistics had grown at margins “below what we expected,” and the company planned to cut logistics costs.
AEO said the following in a statement to WWD:
“While Quiet’s third party business has grown nicely, it has not achieved the plans we envisioned. As a result, we must pull back on expenses to reset the business. This is necessary to improve profitability, particularly given prevailing macro headwinds….We are reducing the size of the Quiet workforce to be more in line with the current business trend….This decision was not made lightly, and we realize this will impact the lives of affected employees. We will provide them a variety of transition benefits.”
American Eagle Outfitters also stated that it is “committed to the continued transformation of our supply chain, and Quiet Platforms plays an important role in that strategy as we work to achieve increased profitability. Over the past few years Quiet has been tremendously beneficial to AEO, providing much needed distribution and fulfillment capacity to grow our industry-leading brands.”
AEO said Quiet was helping American Eagle’s business. But it restructured the third-party side of the platform that provided services to others, which included downsizing the workforce.
“We now have a leaner organization that will position us well for the future. We see opportunities to leverage Quiet's fulfillment capabilities to unlock even greater efficiencies in our operating model,” Rempell told analysts this week. “This includes optimizing inventory placement, buys, and replenishment as we work upstream through our supply chain.”
AEO did transform its own supply chain, but it appears that the frenemy network is not emerging at the same pace. The move indicates that AEO is sticking closer to the goal of bringing change to its own operations for omnichannel success. For now, that doesn’t mean it needs to provide those efficiencies for others, as well.
Each of the moves detailed above offer examples of companies that opted to scale by acquiring others.
That’s a distinct approach from the other companies we’ve covered in this series, including Amazon, Walmart, Target and Chewy. They all chose to build their own fulfillment operations for ecommerce, albeit in distinct ways.
We point this out not to suggest that acquisition is an automatic recipe for failure, but simply that build vs. buy is a choice that faces executives as they determine how to meet demand and continue growing ecommerce for a future that is still heading toward online shopping occupying a larger share of retail.
When it comes to the “build” camp, the size of the four major retailers listed above gives them an advantage. They have the resources to undertake ambitious, multiyear projects and they were able to direct even more energy into quickly scaling operations when the pandemic called for it. When the pandemic ended, they surveyed the landscape and made moves toward efficiency and sustainable profits.
The two companies in the “buy” category happened to make their acquisitions at a time when ecommerce was at its peak. Their plans involved creating a new network, rather than scaling up an existing one, and the roadmaps were likely altered drastically when the ecommerce trend line came back to Earth. Yet it’s worth noting that they also tried to add parts of their business that were completely new. It brings up an important question for any executive weighing options:
Do you want to be in the business that you’re acquiring for the long haul?
There’s no question that ecommerce companies will have to scale logistics and realize efficiencies that can maintain profitability. But as they do so, they need not forget who they are.
