Dive Brief:

• In their first week last month, banner ads for Cotton Inc.'s Fashion Delivered campaign on Amazon had about a 5% click-through-rate (CTR), compared to an average of 1% CTR, said Marissa Di Mascio Barlin, a director of the consumer marketing-strategic alliances at the research and marketing organization for cotton, during a Tuesday session at the Mobile Marketing Association's Innovate conference in New York.
• The Fashion Delivered campaign is currently running through Oct. 11, with the ads linking to a video experience that pairs a long-format video of a Fashion Week runway show from this September with a carousel of shoppable items that syncs with the video. 
• Di Mascio Barlin also discussed last year's Bloomingdale's 60-Second Fashion Show, which allowed viewers of a minute-long edit of a runway show to purchase featured items via desktop and mobile. That effort received more than 3 million page views and more than 2.5 million video views, with a 16% video engagement rate that outpaced the industry average of 6.67%. It also received more than 500,000 interactions via influencers and media partner Who What Where.

Dive Insight:

Cotton Inc.’s efforts with both Bloomingdale’s and Amazon demonstrate the power of video to engage shoppers although without sales results it is unclear how effective the campaigns were at driving sales. By integrating e-commerce with video content these brands have been able to bring awareness to products by offering consumers content they are interested in — like footage of a runway show during Fashion Week.

The campaign on Amazon also shows how advertising opportunities on the platform continue to expand, positioning Amazon to be the third-largest advertising platform by spend this year. Cotton Inc.'s effort includes banner ads and a landing page where the 18-minute video plays alongside a carousel of products that rotates while the video runs so viewers see the same or similar products in the video and in the carousel at the same time. Cotton Inc.'s branding appears throughout. The ability to closely link content and commerce on Amazon helps set it apart from other digital advertising platforms. 

The Fashion Week focus and use of influencers in both campaigns likely helped the efforts resonate with millennial and Generation Z consumers who look to and trust influencers, especially in the fashion space. While the campaigns used multiple influencers, they were the type of mid-tier content creators that are seen as more engaging and trustworthy than celebrities and micro-influencers, according to research by Fullscreen and Shareablee.

Apart from a few success stories, social commerce has not yet taken off as a major market for brands. However, Cotton's shoppable video success stories suggest that consumers are primed for campaigns that pair engaging content with an easy to use e-commerce feature, especially as the viewership for online videos exceeds 200 million in 2018, according to a Forrester forecast, making it an even more important channel in which to reach consumers.