Global Digital Marketing & Retail by Alex 88
Inspiration from across the world for retail enthusiasts, e-commerce professionals, marketing lovers and technology fans. Welcome back! I summarized some great links again, I stumbled upon this week.
Goodmorning all! A new saturday, a new newsletter!
✈️Airports set to scrap boarding passes and check-ins in major travel shake-up
I like to travel, big fan of it, also from airports. If it was possible, I think I would even want to have an apartment at an airport 😂 So I always read news on making the travel journey easier.
This news is very welcoming, and I got a taste from it last year at Hong Kong International Airport where they already have a similar system, a token based system. At the check-in counter you get a token (you can refuse if you want), but when you accept everything else is easier. From bag drop, to security gates, to boarding it all then goes via facial recognition. Worked very good. Now an international standard is set for it.
🤖AI in 2025? Therapy & companionship
Researches have been scraping the internet how gen AI usage is changing. It is moving from technical to emotional. Check out the infographic below. It makes sense in my opinion and this therapy/companionship use se is not just a short term trend, with the rise of voice agents, more people living alone and increasing accessibility of ai in our daily lives across the world, will make this trend sticky in my opinion.
Details:
https://hbr.org/2025/04/how-people-are-really-using-gen-ai-in-2025
Check out my previous edition newsletter also, as it also dives into emotional supportive AI:
🤖Neil Patel: Don’t look for untapped marketing channels, look for untapped markets
Neil Patel, nowadays publishes regularly very good content on digital marketing and content marketing. Take a look at this one. Global internet users and web content by language. Also a way to see potential although it’s not a guaranteed successfactor of course.
Look at Internet users by language and the percentage of web pages by language. Look for the languages where the orange bar is bigger than the blue bar. Those are languages worth targeting to grow faster.
https://x.com/neilpatel/status/1910664128101839330/photo/1
🔍SEO time: lots of great slide decks: thank you Aleyda again!
For every SEO and content marketer, if you click a link this month on SEO, click this one. Really a lots of very good presentations from Brighton SEO a recent conference. Very useful for your SEO or content strategy!
https://hub.seofomo.co/surveys/best-brightonseo-presentation-decks/
📺Performance marketing image creation with AI
I follow Dara Denney because she publishes a lot on performance marketing and advertising. Recently she posted this. It looks truly great and this is a huge improvement of what was possible only a few months ago. Probably we tick a legal warning here, as it is not a real person so it’s not an endorsement officially, but, wow, so the creative part goes into prompting. You can be your own “Ogilvy” at home. What a time to be alive!
Dara Denny’s Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@DaraDenney
🇯🇵 DOO: Japan shibuya crossing Google Ad
Now that’s making an impact. At first it looks like the ad is only on one building, but watch the video, the ad is everywhere in that street, at the same time! In the near future with AI glasses also better understandable 😂
🇮🇹 E-commerce in Italy in 2025: the gap with Nordic countries & marketplaces insights
As this is a newsletter on international marketing & E-commerce herewith a report on Italian e-commerce. Highlights:
Italian e-commerce grew by 6% in 2024, reaching a total turnover of €86.2 billion.
Mobile purchases surpassed desktop purchases in 2024, accounting for 51.4% of global traffic.
Digital wallets are the most widely used payment method globally (50%), followed by credit/debit cards (34%).
In Europe, only 45% of Italians made an online purchase in the last week, showing a significant gap compared to Nordic countries.
The strongest performing sectors in Italian e-commerce in 2024 include Betting and Casinos (+31%) and Cars and Motorcycles (+25%).
Amazon is the dominant player in the Italian marketplace, holding 40% of the preferences.
A key trend in Italian e-commerce is the increased use of AI, with 64% of companies using AI to create personalized, real-time shopping experiences.
Italian e-commerce businesses are focusing their digital strategies on increasing profit/turnover (64%) and brand visibility (45%).
Many Italian e-commerce companies face challenges in online promotion, with 41% reporting it as difficult.
More than half of all Italian retailers sell on marketplaces, but most only on one or two.
Download the complete report here: https://www.ecommerceitalia.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Report_Ecommerce_Italy_2025_ENG.pdf
🇨🇭 Watch out: Switzerland’s online anonimity/encryption at risk
The last few years several startups and scale ups emerged in my favorite country, Switzerland, that focus on privacy. I am a happy user of Swiss based Proton VPN and Threema (although I have 0 friends connected via Threema) 🤣
Now security and anonimity are at risk in Switzerland, unfortunately. It’s worth taking not of it, and not taking long term subscribtions on these services for now.
But as Switzerland is probably the most democratic country in the world, there is still voting to be done by the inhabitants on this topic, and I am hoping and thinking the Swiss people will vote against this change.
That’s it for this edition, thank you for reading, liking and subscribing
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