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The news: Ecommerce giant Asos is expanding its Asos Media Group (AMG) retail media business in the face of a challenging economic environment, per The Drum. The retailer launched its retail media business in 2021 and currently supports social media campaigns, targeted emails, and app push notifications. It recently partnered with Criteo to help it expand its advertising offerings.

Despite not putting much consideration into credit scores, the UK has one of the highest household debt to gross disposable income ratios in Europe, at 136% as of Q4 2021, per Statista. And 19% of UK consumers said they expect to borrow even more in the next 12 months to assist with the rising cost of living.

37% of AI initiatives in the UK and US are run by the CMO or another executive, and 26% by a marketing operations team, per a November report from Invoca.

Key stat: UK shoppers are demonstrating more awareness of and understanding around identity checks while shopping online this year, as last year they suffered from £15.3 million ($18 million) in losses due to identity fraud during the 2021 holiday season. The data comes from FICO’s Fraud, Identity, and Digital Banking Consumer Survey, which polled 1,000 UK adults in August 2022.

Consumers are exploring AI-driven shopping tools, but interest varies by application. Image-based item searches and holiday deal assistance are gaining traction, but trust issues and preferences for human customer service agents still pose challenges. Brands must ensure their AI tools address consumer needs, provide transparency, and enhance personalization to build trust and drive adoption.

The company plans to mimic the open banking success it’s had in Europe with Visa A2A in the US. Our take: Despite the challenges Visa will face in 2025, like the DOJ lawsuit and swipe fee settlement renegotiations, the payments network is set up for strong growth. Visa’s card network transaction value is expected to grow 7.0% YoY in 2025, per our forecasts.

One ecommerce business saw a 25% increase in customer engagement and a 30% reduction in cart abandonment after implementing an AI chatbot. Klarna predicts its AI assistant will drive a $40 million profit improvement in 2024. In its first month, Klarna’s genAI-powered assistant handled two-thirds of its customer service chats, doing the equivalent work of 700 full-time agents.

The experiment gauges users’ interest in seeing news content in search results and could push publishers to evaluate their reliance on traffic and ad revenue from Google Search

Our latest report, "Latin America Ecommerce Forecast 2022," explores how the ongoing geopolitical upheaval and economic uncertainty in the region will impact consumer spending in each of the three markets we forecast. Economic headwinds, like rising inflation, and omnichannel shopping habits will set the region’s sky-high ecommerce growth on a return course for earth.

In July, the European Commission (EC) pressed charges against Meta for its ad-free subscription offering, saying it violates DMA standards and doesn’t give consumers a fair choice between existing services and a model that uses less personalized data. It could fine Meta up to 10% of its global revenues.