How different will Q4 be for retail e-commerce this year? All signs point to a record-breaking quarter as digital sales become the new normal after months of lockdowns and quarantines. Experts predict that digital will account for 30% of sales during the upcoming holiday season, up from 14% in 2019.

We hosted a webinar around this topic to help companies strategize on how best to protect their brand for the rest of 2020. In this webinar, Helen Southgate, Managing Director of EMEA and APAC at Acceleration Partners and Van Chappell, General Manager EMEA at BrandVerity, had a lively discussion on what brands should expect to see in Q4 and what this enormous digital spike can mean for online brand protection. The full recording of the webinar is available here.

Here are three key takeaways from the webinar:

Every year, we alert our customers and prospects that Q4 is when we see a significant uptick in non-compliant behavior from affiliates and partners. In some cases affiliates may not be aware of the various program rules of the various brands with which they work. In other cases, bad actors take advantage of the surge in online advertising in preparation for the holidays and the fact that brands are distracted and busy. For would-be fraudsters interested in making some easy commission income, the temptation to divert branded traffic is great.

But not this year!

2020 has been a year of profound change for marketers entrusted with the task of driving maximum sales from digital channels. More than ever, marketers need to maximize performance for every digital channel, especially partnership.

Combination of companies immediately creates the global leader in software and service for the partnership marketing category

Today we officially announce that Partnerize, owner of the BrandVerity business, is acquiring Pepperjam, a leader in affiliate marketing technology and services. This is an exciting new chapter in the history of our companies that will present immense opportunity for our clients.

Our employees are deeply outraged and saddened by the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis. This senseless death, along with the deaths of Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and so many others, was rooted in the deep racial biases and inequities ingrained in society, culture and institutions.

BrandVerity is excited to introduce Progress Reports, a powerful new addition that is coming soon to our paid search monitoring product. Measuring the impact of brand protection and compliance efforts has always been a priority but it is even more crucial today with marketers seeking to further optimize their paid search programs. The addition of Progress Reports will make BrandVerity the only solution that helps leading companies identify, remediate, and now visualize the impact of the actions they are taking to safeguard their brand online.

When BrandVerity started in 2008, we knew companies were challenged with being able to protect their brand online at scale. We recognized the need for substantial technology investments to help customers monitor critical aspects of their online marketing campaigns -- from preventing trademark infringements in paid search to ensuring regulatory compliance of their content across the Web. With the right solution, companies could be confident that they were ultimately protecting all of the hard work, time, and resources spent in building their brands online.

As I write this, I’m working from home, as is the rest of the BrandVerity team. For some of us, that means juggling how to home school our kids during the workday. For others, it translates into having their dogs in their laps during video calls. All in all, though, we are a lucky group to be able to have jobs that enable us to work from home. Our gratitude goes out to those who are not able to do the same, yet are helping our communities function as normally as they can, from healthcare and hospital workers to those at our grocery stores and pharmacies.

With the year already in full swing, global consumer marketers are poised to take advantage of the $5 trillion in global ecommerce spend projected to happen by 2021. And while leading companies will continue to leverage multiple channels across the digital marketing funnel to build their brands, search marketing will still play one of the most critical roles.

With US retail ecommerce spending projected to rise as much as 13.2% to $135.35 billion during this holiday season, it’s no wonder that brands are investing so much in their paid search programs to capture the surge in traffic.

And while brands and their marketing departments are working overtime to drive sales, new BrandVerity research has brought to light some important findings and hidden risks brands need to be aware of when it comes to the journey consumers are taking online to find the perfect gift.

In order to give brands a better understanding of the search experiences their consumers are having this holiday season and beyond, and how they are impacting brand perception, we commissioned a research study of over 1,000 US consumers, balanced against the US population for age, gender, region, and income. Here’s what we found.