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Now that summer is in full swing, many of us have one thing on our minds: travel. Interest in travel-related search topics like “hotel” spikes during the hottest months of the year… …prompting travel brands large and small to battle it out for our vacation bucks. But how do the travel industry’s biggest advertisers leverage display ads to differentiate themselves? Where are they spending their money? And what types of creatives and landing pages do they use? ...

By 2027, global online sales are expected to surpass an eye-watering $8 trillion. So it’s no surprise that starting an ecommerce business consistently ranks as one of America’s most popular side hustles: Of course, to start an ecommerce business, you first need a website. And if you don’t have the coding skills to create one from scratch, your best alternative is to use a website builder. While there’s no shortage of options, not all are a natural choice for online store owners. But three solutions that definitely fit the bill are: ...

About one in 13 adults in the US now identifies as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, or some other sexual orientation besides heterosexual. Which makes Pride month a massive deal for pretty much every brand. And it’s even more essential for those with younger-skewing audiences, given that almost one in 10 millennials and more than one-fifth of Gen Z adults identify as LGBTQ+. Unsurprisingly, this means Pride has become a battleground for brands looking to target LGBTQ+ consumers — and display ads are one of the most hotly contested warzones. ...

Whether you write professionally, like to keep your masterpieces within the notes app, or just stick to writing work emails, you’ve probably heard of (and even used) Grammarly. With a motto of “better writing, better results,” this writing assistant app was founded in 2009 to help people write better, plagiarism-free content. Since its inception, this company has spent a fortune on display ad campaigns, with an estimated ad spend of $210.8M in the last year alone. ...

There are two classic ways to show your mom how much you love her on Mother’s Day. One is to write it in a blog post for a leading competitive intelligence platform ( I love you mom!). And the other is to say it with flowers. Most Americans choose option #2. Per the National Retail Federation, 74 percent of consumers sent their mom flowers for Mother’s Day 2023, making them the nation’s go-to Mother’s Day gift. ...

Remember the days when listening to your favorite artist meant buying a record or CD? While vinyl album sales are on a strong upward trajectory, it’s fair to say we’re living in the digital music age. Streaming overtook physical sales and downloads for the first time in 2018, and it’s hard to see that trend reversing any time soon. Which is music to the ears of the streaming industry, with 91 percent of US internet users listening via some kind of streaming service in 2023: ...

Tax Day wouldn’t rank too highly on most people’s lists of favorite dates. But for the tax software industry, it’s like Christmas, Easter, Valentine’s Day, and Black Friday all rolled into one. Per CivicScience, 39 percent of Americans in 2024 prepared (or planned to prepare) their taxes using tax software, with 23 percent using a free tool and 16 percent choosing a paid platform. Intuit TurboTax is comfortably the most popular tax tool, but there are a bunch of other platforms scrapping it out for the privilege of helping us file our taxes correctly. ...

Here’s a thought exercise. How many times have recommendations from other people driven your purchase decisions? And how many times have you bought something online without checking the reviews first? As for me, I have done that a sum total of zero times. That’s right. I never buy anything without reading the reviews first. And I’m not alone in this. 9 out of 10 customers read reviews before they buy something online. ...

In a world where 95 percent of Americans pay for more than one streaming service, it’s hard to remember a time when we weren’t all hooked on video-on-demand (VoD). But it hasn’t always been this way. Netflix may not have been the world’s first streaming company, but it was certainly the platform that brought the business model to the mass market. Yet for the first decade of its existence, the company didn’t even do streaming — it was a mail order DVD service. ...

Founded in 1938, Samsung is a South Korean conglomerate with affiliates selling everything from life insurance to engineering services to oil tankers. But, from a B2C perspective, the company is best known for appliances and other electronics products. It’s the world’s second-biggest smartphone manufacturer, with a market share of 16.3 percent as of Q4 2023… …and it’s also a major player in countless other consumer electronics niches, including smart TVs, refrigerators, and laptops. ...