Audience hijacking presents a major challenge to retailers
according to 82 percent of respondents
CAMBRIDGE, Mass., March 21,
2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Akamai Technologies,
Inc. (NASDAQ: AKAM), the cloud company that powers and
protects life online, today released the results of a survey on
audience hijacking taken by more than 75 digital marketing, IT
security and technology leaders in retail or e-commerce
organizations with at least 1,000 employees. The full results can
be read here.
Audience hijacking is now a widespread phenomenon that is
estimated to disrupt up to 15 percent of e-commerce site visits. To
enhance their in-browser experiences, many shoppers now install
browser extensions, plug-ins, or other browser widgets to help find
coupons or offer price comparisons. Sometimes these browser
extensions are unknowingly installed on the consumer's device for
malicious purposes and can divert visitors away from their intended
journey, allowing competitors and malicious actors to disrupt
e-commerce experiences carefully crafted by retail brands.
Akamai teamed with Retail Dive for the survey to gauge
how familiar retailers are with audience hijacking and the impact
it presents. The three main findings of the survey include:
- Retailers understand that audience hijacking is a
significant problem: A significant majority of survey
participants (85 percent) said they were at least somewhat familiar
with the concept of audience hijacking. As many as 72 percent said
that they were very or extremely familiar with it. This finding
highlights the fact that, at least among stakeholders within
midsize to large retail organizations, there is broad awareness of
the problem. When asked whether audience hijacking presented a
major challenge to their organization, a large majority (82
percent) of survey participants generally agreed that it
was.
- Retailers lack visibility into exactly what's going on
during site visits: This is particularly in terms of
extensions, pop-ups and scripts running within the customer's
browser. Although today's retailers invest heavily in every aspect
of digital experience management, they're still unable to explain
why a large number of cart abandonments occur. As many as 82
percent of respondents say they lack visibility into the causes of
cart abandonment for five percent of online transactions or more,
or they simply don't know how often shopping carts are abandoned
for reasons they can't determine. Of this group, 30 percent cannot
explain cart abandonment for up to 24 percent of user sessions – a
significant number of lost customer conversions.
- Due to a lack of visibility, retailers tend to underestimate
the likelihood that audience hijacking is causing churn: We saw
this disconnect when 15 percent of survey participants said that
audience hijacking wasn't a major challenge for their organization,
yet 90 percent were seeing user sessions disrupted by such
activities. Some admitted that they entirely lacked visibility into
audience hijacking's prevalence. But audience hijacking clearly
continues to have a major impact on retailers with 28 percent of
respondents reporting that its biggest impact is revenue loss. A
further 23 percent say that it is compromising ROI on digital
marketing investments. Nearly one-quarter of respondents (23
percent) indicate that audience hijacking has diminished their
customers' loyalty, and 17 percent say it's causing fewer shoppers
to make repeat purchases from their e-commerce stores.
"Audience hijacking is a growing problem, and the full extent of
it is often difficult to understand and measure," said Patrick Sullivan, CTO of Security Strategy at
Akamai. "This survey helps give us insight into the challenges
retailers themselves say they face in regard to this issue, which
will only become more widespread this year and beyond."
About Akamai
Akamai powers and protects life online. Leading companies
worldwide choose Akamai to build, deliver, and secure their digital
experiences — helping billions of people live, work, and play every
day. Akamai Connected Cloud, a massively distributed edge and cloud
platform, puts apps and experiences closer to users and keeps
threats farther away. Learn more about Akamai's cloud computing,
security, and content delivery solutions at akamai.com and
akamai.com/blog, or follow Akamai Technologies on Twitter and
LinkedIn.
Contacts
Jim Lubinskas
Akamai Media Relations
703.907.9103
jlubinsk@akamai.com
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SOURCE Akamai Technologies, Inc.