ECOMMERCE: While established retailers experiment with in-store tech enhancements like point-of-sale financing and mobile beacons to bridge the gap between e-commerce and bricks-and-mortar, pure-play e-commerce startups are becoming more specialized as they seek to differentiate themselves. With deals and funding to physical goods e-commerce startups down dramatically this year, it’s clear investors are being far more selective in placing bets on the category. Read more ⇢ Using Mosaic, our predictive algorithm that tracks private company health, we identified 13 early stage e-commerce startups to watch. Read more ⇢

ECOMMERCE: San Francisco has long grappled with regulating sharing-economy startups, many of which are headquartered in the city. In April, it required Uber and Lyft drivers to obtain business licenses and began investigating Airbnb hosts in violation of its short-term rental laws. City supervisor David Campos, who proposed the more restrictive rules passed this month, has also accused Airbnb of exacerbating San Francisco’s housing crisis, asserting that landlords are removing rental units from the market in pursuit of greater profits on Airbnb. Read More ⇢

ECOMMERCE: One of the popular ways that e-commerce companies have gone about to entice consumers is by offering discounts and freebies. Though they may bring in the initial customers, they may not be loyal and shift to the next e-commerce player with heavier discounts. Harshil Mathur, CEO and CoFounder, Razorpay - a payments platform for small medium businesses and larger e-commerce companies who want to run their business online - says that customer delight goes beyond good customer experience. "It means that a firm exceeds the customer’s expectations and give them a pleasant surprise with an unexpected product / service quality.” Read More ⇢

ECOMMERCE: If you outsource huge swaths of your customer experience, customer service, and more to Amazon, you can’t build a brand image and lasting value for your customers. In fact, Amazon won’t even allow you to email your buyers directly — Amazon considers them its customers, and rightly so. Where does this put entrepreneurs? If I were starting from scratch today, I’d absolutely start on Amazon and use its community and resources to launch quickly and get feedback. But I’d work hard on list building outside of Amazon to drive my own ecommerce site. I’d try to build up my own site as fast as possible, while weaning away from Amazon. Read More ⇢

AD TECH: So AOL is primarily focused on 360-degree video. The company is set up to take full advantage of the technology following April's acquisition of RYOT and the opening a public-facing studio. Pezzimenti said 360 video will bring better engagement, "instead of just putting a VR execution out there because it's the bright and shiny new penny."  Another new product aims to capitalize on big news events. Partner Studio Pronto, as it's called, is an amplification tool that came out of conversations with clients who "came to us and wanted to really rally around a burst, a blast, a very quick concentrated hit around a certain event," said Pezzimenti. Read more ⇢

ECOMMERCE: Tiger Global Management LLC, a fund known for its early bet on Facebook, has invested in Trendyol - which sells more than 2,000 local and global brands including luxury labels such as Prada and Versace. Silicon Valley venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development have also invested in Trendyol. Together with Tiger Global, they own 80 percent of the company, having invested $60 million over the last four years. Naspers, the South Africa-based, emerging markets-focused e-commerce and media giant, bought Trendyol rival Markafoni from its founder in 2014. Read More ⇢

ECOMMERCE: As estimated by Scurri, which is the Irish fulfillment platform based in the cloud, the United Kingdom could lose as much as £33.4 billion, which translates to $44 billion in lost eCommerce sales. The Post and Parcel noted on its site Monday that last year £455 billion was spent by Europeans consumers online on eCommerce sites, and £157 billion of that was from the U.K. alone. “For 2016, this figure is expected to reach over £510 billion for the whole of Europe but the U.K.’s expected increase of £33.4 billion to £173.6 billion in 2016 could be lost as a consequence of the Leave vote succeeding.” Read More ⇢

VOICE FIRST: You already talk to Alexa, Amazon’s virtual assistant embedded in the company’s Echo speaker, every day. And now you can ask Alexa to order your Lyft ride, without lifting a finger. Lyft and Amazon announced Tuesday that you can ask the voice-controlled smart home device to call your Lyft, Lyft Line, or a larger Plus vehicle. Lyft is following Uber’s lead, which integrated with Amazon Echo earlier this year but doesn’t currently allow users to call shared UberPool rides via Alexa. The two largest ride-hail companies in the U.S. are in a fierce competition to retain drivers and riders, so they often match each other’s offerings. Read More ⇢

MEDIA: The survey showed that in-feed ads were cited as both the least annoying and most interesting with 86% agreeing that ads were necessary for them to receive free online content. When shown examples of in-feed ads, 82% of business news readers, 85% of entertainment news readers and 41% of news readers felt the content was clearly from a sponsor. These totals correlate to the 45% of business news readers and 44% of entertainment news readers who felt the ads enhanced the website experience, compared to only 27% of news site readers. Read more ⇢

ECOMMERCE: The athletic apparel and footwear retail chain grew its digital traffic by 21% year-over-year in the first quarter of its fiscal 2017. Investments in mobile began to bear fruit during the first quarter of fiscal 2017 for athletic footwear and apparel chain retailer The Finish Line Inc. Finish Line, No. 135 in the Internet Retailer 2016 Top 500 Guide, does not break out online sales in its quarterly earnings reports. CEO Sam Sato told analysts on Finish Line’s Q1 2017 earnings call that digital traffic was up 21% year-over-year during the quarter, with mobile accounting for 62% of that overall growth. Read More ⇢

DATA: They examined the use of performance analytics at an American furniture company to allow employees to compare their efforts alongside their peers. Whilst most employees believed this comparison would motivate them to new heights, in reality the opposite was the case. The authors suggest that this is largely because when we’re ignorant of our standing, we focus more on the task at hand than on our ranking, whilst also operating as a team rather than individuals. Read more ⇢

ADTECH: ComScore (a company part-owned by WPP) has paired with xAd (an outfit that helps advertisers locate audiences in public) to help brands better understand when their mobile ads have driven an in-store visit. The tie-up works by using comScore’s measurement methods, plus xAd’s BluePrint technology to let advertisers measure the reach and frequency of their mobile campaigns; more specifically it better helps them understand how ads served on a mobile phone influenced in-store footfall. Read more ⇢