Ahead of the busy holiday shopping season, Google is souping up its retail ads with new loyalty features. The new features include a way for retail brands to offer personalized pricing and shipping perks to members of their brand loyalty programs on both free and paid shopping listings on Google, while also helping brands target lapsed customers.

That includes rolling out a “loyalty mode” within Google Ads’s retention goal feature, which creates bidding strategies designed to target loyal customers. If a brand sees higher lifetime values (LTV) from its existing loyalty program members than from new ones, it may choose to set lower target ROAS for higher LTV customers, Jyotika Prasad, the company’s senior director of retail ads, explained.

How are eCommerce brands driving growth, loyalty, and performance in an uncertain market? Marketing strategies are being reshaped by shifting platform and macro economics, changing user behavior, and the dominance of China-based apps in a landscape influenced by trade pressures.

As the holiday season approaches, marketers face both opportunity and complexity. While moderate growth is expected, uncertainty remains high. To help marketers plan Q4 and beyond, this report analyzes $4.2 billion in ad spend to surface key trends and benchmarks from Q4 2023 through May 2025. 

18% of Americans have subprime credit scores, while 17% have near-prime scores, according to Experian. That data illuminates that many U.S. consumers—about 35%—are ineligible for prime credit products. In this playbook, you’ll learn how offering co-branded credit cards can help you foster strong, deep relationships with the large non-prime population. The playbook shares how, along with being economically advantageous, this approach helps your business engage eager, underserved consumers. You’ll also unlock tips for designing a successful co-branded credit card program and access insights from Concora Credit’s Chief Commercial Officer, Rolando De Gracia. 

Approximately one-third of Gen Z and millennials surveyed by Gale said they stopped using a loyalty program because it felt impersonal. When it comes to building a successful loyalty program, emotional connection is key, according to a new report from Gale, a business agency which provides insights to brands. Programs with an active community can be particularly enticing, with 70% of consumers indicating this makes them more likely to join a program. 

Today’s online shopper holds the reins, and for ecommerce retailers, there’s no standing still. Shoppers are demanding more of ecommerce retailers and expect an online shopping experience that’s more personalized, with options and suggestions, including for payments. And payment methods such as buy now, pay later (BNPL) and social commerce checkout help merchants to sell more and customers to buy more.

Retail media is an incredibly powerful tool for influencing purchasing behavior at or near the point of sale (POS), which is why it’s such a valuable asset for retailers and a sought-after marketing channel for brands. However, retail media also faces a consistent challenge: attribution. This difficulty linking sales to ad spend has led CPG brands to invest billions in campaigns with limited visibility into their actual effectiveness. It has also made it harder for retailers to prove the value of their retail media networks (RMNs). Today, artificial intelligence, connected data solutions and advanced loyalty programs are changing this equation by enabling precise personalization, accurate attribution, and measurable results that benefit retailers, brands and customers alike.

Retailers dread the dreaded “R” word - returns. With return rates averaging 16.5% of of online sales, Ecommerce merchants face rising costs that eat into profits. But returns don’t have to spell doom for your bottom line, even though every sector of commerce is impacted by returns.

Surprisingly, pricey products have an astronomical return rate of 50%, outpacing average return rates. Moreover, during festive seasons like the holidays, online return rates can skyrocket to up to 30% - underscoring the importance of monitoring return metrics. Carefully tracking return rates provides Ecommerce merchants invaluable understanding of customer preferences and happiness with their purchases.

First Insight surveyed 3,000+ global consumers and 300+ retail executives to uncover a critical divide: while most shoppers say they’ll abandon brands over price hikes, executives plan to raise prices anyway. This exclusive report reveals the growing trust gap between consumers and brands, and how pricing decisions today could cost retailers long-term loyalty.

Read the full study to explore:

• Where consumers and retailers disagree most on tariffs and pricing