When I convinced my bosses at Wirecutter to spend over $700 on a 450-pound, 6-foot-tall cardboard box filled with hundreds of mystery products that had been returned to Amazon and other retailers, I assumed that what we’d find inside would be a revealing snapshot of what shopping looks like today. Anyone can buy these pallets stuffed with discarded products. For months, I’d watched content creators on social media giggle in excitement as they’d pull packages one by one from their own surprise boxes and rip them open, ceremoniously revealing a bevy of weird and wonderful items. Secondary sales were worth an estimated $846 billion in the US in 2024, up from $297 billion in 2008, according to Zac Rogers, PhD, associate professor of supply-chain management at Colorado State University, who told me that those figures are probably conservative. Quick-and-easy returns are a benefit of shopping at giant corporate retailers, and people take advantage of return policies liberally. An estimated 15.8% of sales, worth around $849.9 billion, will be returned in 2025, according to data from a joint study done by the National Retail Federation and the UPS-owned company Happy Returns.

At the height of the “shutdown” that began in late February, retailers were very unsure how COVID-19 would impact their business, their employees’ lives as well as their personal lives. Many brands reduced print, cut expensive marketing programs, and went to remote working almost immediately. There is no overstating the overwhelming effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on our personal and professional lives. Now that we have nine months behind us, what have we learned? Well, the American consumer generally doesn’t stop shopping; they just shop differently. It’s vital to understand and recognize that your customers’ needs change during a disruption of this magnitude, and it’s incumbent on the brand to respond by fulfilling them in unique ways. When brands better understand the nuances of changing customer behavior, there is opportunity to react differently to drive a stronger position to offer relevant and timely merchandise messaging and thus drive stronger demand. Read the entire assessment at: https://cohereone.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/CH1-Web-Analytic-Trends-through-Sep-2020-V4.pdf?utm_medium=email&_hsmi=97834829&_hsenc=p2ANqtz--ajRGVYmJUx1IK214btnKyNtdBwwQX0Mg1LKSKPHHeTrbVpn9ygCUT_rM3QV7k7tKv1-A5ld_NZWXXaswXjD_g5v1Uiul5ODlxbl8QbcyQlIAUpqI&utm_content=97834829&utm_source=hs_email

Hearst Magazines announced an expansion of AURA that, for the first time ever, brings together Hearst’s proprietary targeting signals with Amazon Ads trillions of browsing, shopping and streaming insights for programmatic campaigns exclusively available in Amazon DSP. Debuting at Cannes, this new offering unlocks a powerful, privacy-safe connection between content engagement across Hearst Magazines’ 30+ U.S. brands paired with in-market shopping insights from Amazon Ads. Enabled through Amazon Publisher Cloud, advertisers can easily reach audiences at the intersection of inspiration and purchase intent. “AURA is already delivering incredible results for our advertisers — driving higher click-through rates, deeper attention and measurable brand lift,” said Lisa Ryan Howard, global chief revenue officer at Hearst Magazines. “As we see increased programmatic interest in our inventory — especially from DSPs like Amazon — it’s the right time to bring the power of AURA targeting and meet buyers where they’re already transacting.”