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As they have for the past several years, Chinese tourists – more than 60 million of whom ventured overseas in the first half of the 2015 – sought to avoid higher prices and enjoy better shopping experiences outside of China.

I have always said the Apple SDK for its App Store is the best marketing investment the company has ever made outside of the legal dollars it spent on patent grandstanding.

United States retail sales in the months of November and December are forecasted to increase 5.7 percent year over year, reaching $885.7 billion. That is an increase from the 3.2 percent growth rate predicted earlier this year, and the highest since the 6.3 percent rise in 2011.

Whether it is because your budget needs to get used up before the New Year, or because you want a cut of the consumer holiday spend pie, I suggest keeping the extra spending this time of year to a minimum.

Even though app usage is incredibly strong, conversion rates through that mobile channel remain weak. Forrester Research reports that “most retailers say their mobile Web sales continue to outweigh their app sales.”

Pull out your phone or iPad or laptop. Since you are already reading this article online, open a new tab. Go to your favorite social site – I will pick Instagram.

Why do marketers spend more chasing new audiences instead of rewarding and retaining brand loyal audience?

The make-or-break holiday shopping season is upon us, spurring retailers to determine where they want to speak to would-be customers, how often and with what messages.

As mobile data management technology becomes more sophisticated, advertisers now have access to more types of contextual data that can be used in conjunction with user location and POI data to target more relevant and specific audiences.

Retailers are losing $18 billion annually due to shopping cart abandonment. Research shows two out of three users who add items to their online shopping cart leave without making a purchase. The numbers are even worse on mobile, where conversion rates are 70 percent lower than desktop.

If your Web site cannot keep up with the high demand, you will risk losing valuable traffic when it matters most this season.

While Apple’s iOS9 ad-blocking feature presents quite the conundrum for advertising industry players, it is a long-overdue opportunity to impress customers.

The case for mobile is evident, and what is more important than ever is how to stand out amidst the 1.6 million apps in Google Play and 1.5 million apps in the AppStore (as of July 2015). Battling for attention means staying ahead of the curve and knowing how to give users what they want.

As mobile shopping continues to increase, retailers cannot ignore their mobile sites and applications when prepping for the 2015 holiday shopping season.

The role of mobile devices in the path to purchase has fundamentally changed how shoppers are using their mobile devices, both at the beginning of their purchase funnel and for research, and even while consumers are inside of a bricks-and-mortar store.

Given the hectic holidays – and the reality that mobile now accounts for more than half of all digital spend – you are likely already in the midst of some important campaign planning.

Without cross-device tracking, marketers face a number of challenges in their marketing strategies.

Gaining any type of intelligence about the consumer – from building audience segments to simply using a geofence to trigger a proximity ad – also requires good point of interest (“POI”) data, the description of the physical context of the user.

Efficiency and simplicity are deeply ingrained in the consumer mentality when it comes to mobile. But frictionless experiences are still playing catch-up to those expectations, particularly in mobile commerce.

Uncovering the right audience and persuading them to make a booking does not have to be challenging.

There has been discussion recently around the role of ad mediation in achieving the best possible yield for publishers’ inventory.