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New Survey of Retailers Finds Growing Awareness and Concern Around Audience Hijacking
Sunday, April 16, 2023
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
View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/new-survey-of-retailers-finds-growing-awareness-and-concern-around-audience-hijacking-301776204.html
SOURCE Akamai Technologies, Inc.
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