Marketplaces provide a new way for retailers to interact and engage with customers, offering a broad assortment of products and services at competitive prices, and have quickly gained traction as an extension of retailers' eCommerce pursuits

According to SOASTA, analyzing big data from the week before Thanksgiving to the end of December, retail traffic dips around Christmas and New Year, recovers briskly in January, rises steadily after January 2nd, and by January 26th traffic will have reached almost the same levels as mid-December.

Every year over a hundred million people (WSJ) tune in to the Super Bowl. And many of them have their smartphones in hand, actively using their apps during the game.

To re-evaluate and rebalance the digital approach for your company, says the Borenstein Group, take advantage of this "Top Ten" list of Branding & Marketing Trends for 2017

Today's journalists are short on time and a proper online newsroom. Access to key features, says the report, can mean the difference between your inclusion in a story (with up-to-date and accurate information,) or your exclusion.

According to Nielsen's third-quarter (2016) Total Audience Report, presented by Jon Lafayette, the decline in live TV viewing slowed in the third quarter, as the number of TV households drop with more people adding streaming services.

A record $9.8 billion was spent on national, state and local campaigns. The Executive Summary shows that TV got the largest share, digital media got more than expected (mostly due to social media), and 2017 is forecast to see $5.8 billion spent on political ads.

"Gen Z, born between 1997 and 2011, is now coming of age in large numbers, and marketers can't afford to take as long to come to grips with Gen Z as they did with millennials."

American adults are spending 53% more time with digital media than they were three years ago, says comScore's 2016 US Mobile App Report, but how they access the internet has changed markedly over that time frame.

What will 2017 look like? Will Trump-style leadership set the tone for 2017? Will chatbots become the new norm in brand/consumer relationships? Are we seeing a return to simplicity in marketing?