E19: Daniel Peach

Richard Hill:
Okay, welcome to another episode of eCom@One, and today's guest is Daniel Peach. Now, Daniel is the retail digitalization lead at Google. How are you doing, Daniel?
Daniel Peach:
Yeah, doing well. Thanks for inviting me.
Richard Hill:
Thanks for coming on. I'm really looking forward to this one. We're going to do a bit of a deep dive into YouTube ads for eCom store and a little chat about display is the plan, Daniel. Is that okay?
Daniel Peach:
Yes, sounds good.
Richard Hill:
Okay, so I think before we get into the nitty gritty and some of the strategy parts, I'm quite intrigued to understand what the process was for you becoming the retail digitalization lead at Google. How did that come about? Talk about that for us. That'd be great.
Daniel Peach:
Yeah, I have probably a non-traditional path for most googlers. I think the company initially was engineering heavy, and so most people came from that side. We've rounded out a bit on the business side as we've gotten more mature. But even then, a lot of people have media backgrounds. Actually I studied accounting at university. So very, very different to marketing. Worked in audit for a few years and transactions of mergers and acquisitions and bankruptcies. Very interesting now that the markets are changing.
Richard Hill:
Yes.
Daniel Peach:
So helpful on that front. Yeah, and then I went into consulting for aerospace and defence for the US army and the US military.
Richard Hill:
Got it.
Daniel Peach:
Very, very different to marketing. Didn't touch it at all for years. Yeah, and then I went to a business school and came out and this was ... I did an internship with Google on Google marketing platform, so the enterprise level ad buying platform. And then when I finished that, this job was open and it seemed interesting. So I was very new to retail. I worked with a few retail clients, but yeah, the past almost two years, I guess, two years come November, have been a big education on retail and on marketing in general.
Richard Hill:
Okay, so from accounting to aerospace to marketing to specifically, retail, leading of the retail side of it. Wow.
Daniel Peach:
Yes, and wow.
Richard Hill:
Fantastic. So I think obviously, Google ads, and the different aspects of Google ads and the different platforms and areas that we've talked a lot on the podcast about Google Shopping, I think that's something very much that you use a lot, and talk on a lot. But I'm going to dive into display and YouTube. Where would you say is a good place for those guys that are listening in, that may be getting started on the display side on YouTube as well? Well, that would be a good start point for eCommerce stores.
Daniel Peach:
Yeah. I mean, I think if we dial in just on retail, the question is, what are your goals coming out of it? Because YouTube, I think traditionally has been used more for branding. So if you think classically of a film trailer, that really punchy, really engaging advertising. What we're seeing is we're seeing shifts in the way shoppers are interacting with YouTube. So, for instance, somebody might search for Nike trainers, for instance, on google.com. Often they would then go into YouTube to watch reviews or learn more about the product. So it's becoming a bit more lower funnel as well as upper funnel. So I think if the aim is awareness, which is a more advanced form of advertising in the sense that you really want to anchor on performance as an eCommerce brand.
Daniel Peach:
But if you do want to invest in awareness, the formats there are really those skippable videos. We call it TrueView for reach. And that's really an awareness play. But I'd say more classically, we have a new one that's come out called TrueView for action, and that's really performance focused. So we're moving toward lower funnel and the idea of that as a way to boost your search performance. So, lower CPCs really have an additional reach or additional surface. Yeah. And then on, I guess briefly on display, display is now part of smart shopping campaigns, which you may have seen. So whereas we used to recommend standalone strategies on display, now, if it's a retailer in particular, and you have a feed that's lined up, you can use display basically as additional reach through smart shopping campaigns, so it's become a lot simpler.
Richard Hill:
Yeah, and great answer. So using YouTube, specifically using maybe search ads as your main performance challenge to shopping ads, then having YouTube as a secondary awareness option sitting in there as well to help drive and get people over the line as it were as well on search.
Daniel Peach:
Yeah, I think if the awareness is something, we're seeing brands that are a bit larger, and that haven't been as materially impacted invest in awareness. And what we saw in the last recession, was brands that invested heavily in awareness ended up gaining a lot of market share, just because what we're figuring in recessions is, first thing to go it tends to be branding. So those that have the capacity to invest in that will tend to over perform in the years as recovery happens.
Richard Hill:
Yeah, great. What non-remarketing audience would you use in displaying if your target was to get the highest possible rise? What would you say for that?
Daniel Peach:
Yeah, it's a good question. I think, so taking maybe a slightly Google centric lens is we're moving a lot toward automation, so less manual optimization. And part of that is, so smart displays ... we have smart shopping campaigns and smart display. Smart display is embedded in smart shopping campaigns, but it's a bit of a standalone. So remarketing, and then what's called similar audiences, they're both on automatically so no need to opt in. It's more of an opt out. And I think the idea is display traditionally it's been used for remarketing, because we know conversion rates have been historically sub 5%. So the idea is if you can continue to show those, whether it's in this case inventory, so maybe going back to the trainer's example.
Daniel Peach:
If you're showing that exact products all over Google's Display Network, the idea is bring them back into the funnel, that kind of thing.
Richard Hill:
Yeah.
Daniel Peach:
Similar audiences is the idea that you may have ... we can look across all of these consumers and understand what the purchases have been, and recommend products that are maybe similar, or that they may like. So, in addition to trainers, maybe it's shorts or maybe it's other workout equipment, or maybe it's a different set of trainers. So it's pulling from the product feed and chasing the highest ROAS but using again, automation.
Richard Hill:
Yeah, our team has had a lot of success with similar audience. Yes. But you have to get to a certain level in your account to be able to do that.
Daniel Peach:
Right.
Richard Hill:
These guys that are maybe listening in, what do you think is a reasonable spend or a reasonable amount of data to get to, to be able to get the most out of this or similar audiences for these guys that maybe they are maybe a year or two into their eCommerce journey. They're maybe doing between 100 grand a month to a million, a couple of million a year. What are of stepping stones to be able to use similar audiences?
Daniel Peach:
Yeah, I'd say, so similar audiences is ... because it's built into ... I'll start with all of the smarts we have, like smart bidding, smart shopping and smart display were all built for smaller customers actually, they weren't built for our biggest customers. And the idea is, that levelled the playing field a bit. So it is a good point. I think as a standalone audience, as you said, you'd have to build up to it. I wouldn't over-complicate it, so if you do use manual, then yeah, you can manually ... you can opt in on audiences. But I guess over-engineering these campaigns can often come at the cost of ROAS because you tend to break it down. You build basically barriers around the scope and the breadth of what they can reach.
Daniel Peach:
And what we found is that the automation just does it itself. So if you target two ROAS for their target ROAS, for instance, it's going to chase and give you the highest results. But the more stipulations you put on it, the more restricted it's going to be and it's okay to do that.
Richard Hill:
I think that's the same with a lot of, whether you're putting restrictions on something while what we see, we refer to it as a slightly different thing, but that bid stacking where you adjust this, and we'll adjust this, then we adjust this, this, this, this, this and before you know it, you've adjusted nine things and the compound effects of all those things, means you've got literally a 3% chance of getting in front of your audience, which ... You really have to be quite careful what levers you do pull, because if you end up pulling too many of them then you're not getting in front of any audience potentially. Because quite often what we see in accounts is a client might come to us and say, "I need to get five times ROAS." Well, to get five times ROAS is easy in any account if you don't spend much money, so obviously you need a ROAS.
Richard Hill:
The way we say it is you need a ROAS because you need a conversion value target as well, as getting a ROAS of five and getting a few thousand pounds of sales is not going to help you sell products that you've got in the warehouse, et cetera. So trying to get that balance and pulling off maybe all the levers in one go to then hit the ROAS, but then you might only get a few small amount turnover. We do see that a lot. We see that a lot where they maybe got the ROAS, but then the turnover is just not there. So it's then looking at the opportunities within the account, whether that's where the biggest wastage is or where the biggest opportunity is, and looking at that.
Daniel Peach:
Yeah, I mean, I think the other thing is ROAS is adjustable, right? So you can set a target and that target can move and the higher you set that target, again the more restricted the number of potential shoppers you're reaching. The other thing is, I mean ultimately, you can still target sales and loosen that a bit and get people who are maybe not quite at the stage of them about to click to buy. They may be in that branded keyword space if you will or even higher up, so you can reach them earlier in the funnel and still target sales but try to broaden your audience a bit. Because I guess the other thing is how well do you know your audience? I think a lot of eCommerce brands do know their audience, but it's impossible to find that exactly in given digital advertising.
Daniel Peach:
So ultimately, it's going to search for people you may not have realized, maybe tuned into your brand and maybe willing to buy to the smaller brands actually, because you may get a couple of sales a year. So if the idea from the same person, so if you don't have a repeat buying behaviour you may not know that somebody that is in your addressable market is actually tuned in. So again, it's a bit of loosening that, letting the ... it's a bit uncomfortable, but letting the technology do its job and find these people at best prices.
Richard Hill:
Brilliant. So, I think with eCommerce stores, usually the go to format and the go to seems to be shopping search, obviously, with about YouTube and display. And I think, quite often when we talk about YouTube, there's quite a new thing for most merchants, most eCommerce stores. So what would you say to the guys listening, what's the best opportunity or the biggest opportunity right now in YouTube ads?
Daniel Peach:
Yeah. Still going back to the performance focus, I'd say TrueView for action. It's a really nice compliment. And I guess one of the challenges, video is a new format, for a lot of people. If you've been working in search and shopping, you tend to have product catalogue photos, you can create search ads pretty easily. YouTube relies largely on creative excellence, and that can be difficult. It takes some experimentation. We also know that videos can be quite expensive to create, more expensive than other forms of creative. So one thing we are launching is called Video Builder. Basically, template videos in some sense, so you can access a catalogue of music from YouTube, you can use a couple different formats or templates. It basically lessens the load and it democratizes in some sense the ability to create videos for your brand.
Richard Hill:
That's using the with the video ads, obviously that creative side, and there's a lot more tools out there, and a lot more tools, so with one off fees and whatnot. But honestly, if you guys are building that in now that's going to be great. Yeah.
Daniel Peach:
Yeah, it's true. The other thing I think we're experimenting with is video on display, so using that network integrating video into it. So theoretically, you could optimize for each channel. I think there are a bunch of creative excellence tips that we can go to if you like. But the idea is there are certain things that we've found that work really well on YouTube. And it might be different to say, Facebook, for instance, or other platforms that you advertise on, in that the use case, I think for YouTube is interesting. We're seeing people tend to watch longer videos, they tend to have audio on, which is not true of other video platforms. So the way you even create those videos, I think is interesting because you almost have to optimize for the platform. But ultimately, it's a huge channel so you can get a lot of traffic out of it.
Richard Hill:
So it's very different to Facebook in that, well, often you're scrolling through Facebook, and you don't want the volume on. When you're on YouTube you're expecting to watch something serious, the sound on you. So you would have the video because you have the sound on. You say, "Yeah."
Daniel Peach:
Yeah, pretty obvious, isn't it? Yeah.
Richard Hill:
Everyone's like, subtitles, subtitles, subtitles for Facebook. Whereas YouTube, would you still recommend subtitles on as well or?
Daniel Peach:
Yeah. I think it's probably a best practice. I mean, you can design the video in a way where the subtitles makes sense, because you can see where the subtitles are. So making sure that it doesn't block your logo, for instance. Simple things like that, but yeah, I think it's 95% as the stat. So 95% of people have audio on when they watch a YouTube video. So, I mean, it's just an extra ... from a sensory perspective it's an extra way of reinforcing that brand messaging, both visually, and then through audio in case they happen to be listening.
Richard Hill:
Great. So we touched on, so looking at YouTube ads, and we touched on also similar audiences. Is there any other audiences you think work well with the YouTube ads?
Daniel Peach:
Yeah. I'd say, so maybe, I think of it as a concentric circle building out in terms of intent. So if you think I guess at the centre of the circle, we have an audience called custom intent, which is looking at a ... so from a shopper by shopper level, which keywords they've already searched for. So it's the clearest, clearest form of intent. And it's on YouTube, right? So it's going to look at what they've looked, at what they've searched for on search and then connect that. I guess going out a bit, you can look at what are called in-market audiences. So the idea is similar to custom intent, but just a lightly, maybe a level out if you will, where they've expressed interest in products that you have and maybe not necessarily your keyword specifically, the more of a category keyword than a brand keyword.
Richard Hill:
Yeah, yeah.
Daniel Peach:
And then we have life events, which are interesting for some businesses. So if you think of, I think classically I am in the process of buying a house. So I've been shopping for furniture quite a lot, made a lot of these furniture brands. So I am at the perfect, perfect moment for home moves. But the same is true of maybe marriage, of weddings, of that kind of thing so you can-
Richard Hill:
A lot of products that you didn't think you needed, and now that you're now about to purchase lots of things that weren't on the list initially for the house move.
Daniel Peach:
Yeah. Well, it's interesting too, because when you work in marketing, you're acutely aware of how you're being marketed to. So across Instagram, and Facebook, and Google, and everywhere, I'm seeing a lot of furniture, so I can appreciate it.
Richard Hill:
Yeah, it's been quite a bumper category, hasn't it? Vertical in these last three or four months, the whole DIY house garden, obviously huge things. We'll come to that towards the end, and it will be good to look at some of the specifics on that. So going back to the creative, I think that's where I think quite often when we look at accounts and we look at agencies that have looked at accounts and worked on, you've got the mechanical, the number side, then you've got this creative side, and the two very different skills very rarely you get the same person that get a star on both sides. So it's quite often having that team within an agency that can work on both sides.
Richard Hill:
But what tips would you give on the creative? what things? I know you've given a few already, but is there anything specifically, so anything else that you would give that will help our listeners to stand out when they are creating on display on YouTube?
Daniel Peach:
Yeah, so more for YouTube, but I would say we use this framework ... I was in consulting, so I love frameworks, called ABCD. So if I remember correctly, it's attract, brand, connect and direct. So attract would be appropriately framing in a tight frame. You'll see this actually in Google's advertising. So if you ever seen a Google ad, they're very visually appealing. And they usually have a very tight shot. Because you can get distracted if it's a wider shot, and there are too many things to pay attention to. There's particularly for YouTube, the first five seconds, we know that we have the audience for at least five seconds, just given dynamics.
Daniel Peach:
So having a couple of shots in rapid succession really brings the audience in, in the first place and may encourage them to watch even longer.
Richard Hill:
Yeah.
Daniel Peach:
There are by the way, formats that target different lengths so you can select. It's five seconds, or six seconds, 15 seconds, et cetera. So you can go for shorter or longer formats. But yeah, the first five seconds, obviously are the most compelling and you want to hook. And then interestingly, humans on the front end, really resonate. So if you think of the classic one, I think is beauty products, where you obviously want to see that with a human or on a human because it's a very human centric product. But even things like maybe cell phones, which are more traditionally techie and you may see in isolation, it's still humans. I think there's just an instinctive response that we have.
Richard Hill:
Seeing people with the product or in the ad, yeah, is-
Daniel Peach:
Yeah.
Richard Hill:
Products on their own, basically what you're saying.
Daniel Peach:
Yeah. So in branding, I think the logo is really important because you may have full attention and you may have partial attention. So you really want to make sure the logo is there throughout. So this would be both visually and then auditorily. I'm not sure what the word is. But anyway-
Richard Hill:
Yeah-
Daniel Peach:
Yeah, but anyway, yeah.
Richard Hill:
Yeah.
Daniel Peach:
Yeah. But, so having the logo present, really in the first five seconds because again, that's the hook. So, if they happen to ... in our videos, we have skippable and non-skippable ads, but most people will go with skippable ads. So if the idea is that they could skip it, you want to at least get them to see the logo. So then it operates as maybe a slightly better version of a display ad at that point, more engaging, and you've got audio but that way you guarantee that at least they see the equivalent of the ad first before they skip.
Richard Hill:
Yeah.
Daniel Peach:
Yeah, I think just in general, the more creative elements on the connection, that's agencies are really good at this piece, finding the right hook, so depending on your brand, it may be humour, it may be an emotional connection. It may be something really thought provoking, and it's really contextual. And yet, it's having a clear call to action at the end of it or during, right. So, I saw an example the other day, it might have been easy, I can't quite remember. Every call is important, but it was an instance where they showed prices, they flash prices up for different destinations. So Tenerife, 40 pounds or something. And really that in and of itself, acts as a call to action, because you think, "Right, it's that price. I should jump on that." So-
Richard Hill:
Yeah, and that's fantastic. That's a real quick fly around lots of great stuff there. So obviously, you're in and out of accounts all the time, you're in an out of the platform all the time. You will see some reoccurring themes of mistakes that people make, that maybe are things that you could highlight, stop our listeners making. So what are some of the biggest mistakes you've seen in displaying YouTube ads, accounts?
Daniel Peach:
Yeah, I think it's about thinking how do you differentiate your usage of displaying video from your usage of say search in shopping, because you can use all of them really for performance. On display, I think the risk there is again, over engineering. You can really overly segment. And I think it's not just us, so I think Facebook is also moving somewhat toward automation. So the idea is the performance is getting better over time. We're seeing CPCs drop over time. And so, there's maybe a jump in trust there and I know this is something that a lot of brands have struggled with is really trusting the tech. But it is getting to the point where the automation is working exceptionally well.
Daniel Peach:
So, making that big jump toward automation and really starting to push that frees up time for creatives. And on YouTube, it's probably just thinking about how to optimize for YouTube. So what's the real use case for YouTube for your brand? It's not just unpaid, it's also inorganic. So do you have product reviews or product demos on YouTube? Are the videos again going through those creatives? Are they designed for shorter attention spans, which is what we're seeing? But enough to engage and build awareness or encourage people to take action. So it's really thinking through why you would use YouTube in addition to search and shopping.
Richard Hill:
So really thinking through and then not over-optimizing, over-segmenting. And what you're saying then is use a lot of the smart technology that is-
Daniel Peach:
Yeah. I mean, it's on our part, but it really is designed ... So more of just a general sense across the search shopping, display and video. We are moving toward this full reach concept, so we know our products have been complicated. So onboarding is complicated, even integration can be complicated, usage can be complicated. You have to have basically a full degree in Google and a full degree in Facebook and these other ones, to understand how best to use the platforms. And obviously entire industries are built around that. But what we're working toward over time is this idea that you should be able to just input whatever your objective is.
Daniel Peach:
So it could be new customer acquisition, it could be re-engagement with existing customers, it could be awareness, it could be consideration. Really thinking through that and trying to make it as simple as possible. So ultimate simplicity is the goal for us. But really having the idea of the universal reach, right? So to really thinking through how somebody can reach customers across all these properties, right, because we also have Gmail and we have Discover, which is that newsfeed, if you will on Android. And yeah, so it's trying to simplify and really to level the playing field.
Richard Hill:
It's quite an interesting time with big warehousing, because there's smart everything, smart shopping, smart here and there that's so awesome.
Daniel Peach:
Right.
Richard Hill:
Yeah, and we have people come on board that have used smart and had a lot of success, and others that have quite often hit a ceiling where they can't find ... Yeah, I think obviously, it's evolving all the time. Will we ever get to the point where it's just literally press the button, agree the ROAS and you can really, really get a real optimal turnover. And I think with that in some degree, with quite a few clients we've had on board with us like, "Wow, that is actually really good. But it's like how far the automations will go? Will agencies be needed in 12 months, 24 months for the for the day-to-day, so they'll always be needed for the ideas and more on the strategy side. But the mechanical movement of just in middle, the thousands of adjustments that need to be made in an account.
Richard Hill:
I think, obviously, as the months progress it's evolving all the time isn't it, at your end?
Daniel Peach:
Yeah. We've been actually working on this with agencies directly. I mean, obviously, we work a lot with the WPPs and the Dans and everyone else. And I think there is a shift in what agencies are doing and have done, the shift on their end actually toward digital. So that in of itself has been a big change in the way they do business because the forms of media consumption has changed a lot. But also thinking through their natural role. So, the media campaign management has been a big part of their business and I think the question is, what is their best duty. So as you said, strategy and creative. That's becoming even more important, because if you think about democratizing the playing field on things like performance, advertising and even awareness, we're moving toward automation on awareness as well, or up the funnel.
Daniel Peach:
That makes the creative even more important. And you can start to see how certain companies stand out. It's more obvious on things like display and video but it's equally important on text. Because if you have really compelling keywords or taglines or whatever it is, you'll see the changes in performance over time. And agencies I think are much better equipped, and obviously we're not. That's not our business. But also customers themselves, it's that years of experience that's built up, that I think agencies really excel at understanding what works best.
Richard Hill:
Interesting time, isn't it? I think, as probably about four years ago, I think, from our standpoint in the agencies we were really fully using automation and building out different automation suites, different automation scripts, and I think we have about 30 now that we focus on. Obviously, that's not using smart shopping, that's using our own scripts that we work with, primarily. But I think for those most eCom stores that I see that they might have 5,000 or 20,000 skews, they're still doing stuff manually. It's an issue. It's impossible to be able to keep on top of things, isn't it? I think it is.
Daniel Peach:
Yeah. I guess the other point is, I focus just on Google, but we're not the only advertising platform. So the other piece of it, where I think agencies are doing really well, and are investing is media mix modelling, right? So looking at their new advertising. Amazon didn't really have much of an advertising business a couple of years ago, and suddenly it's ... the juggernaut is growing really quickly on things like sponsored product ads. So you can really see there are different use cases and we know that some customers do really well on Facebook, Instagram, some do really well on Amazon, some do really well on Google. I think the expectation is that everyone tends to invest across different channels to reach different audiences and with different messages.
Daniel Peach:
But we will never because of the walled garden concept. Somebody has to sit on the outside and oversee all these different platforms and understand them, and that's where agencies excel as well.
Richard Hill:
Yeah, I know. Great. So, we're four months-ish into lockdown, obviously quite a lot of in their work space. Obviously a lot of people still work from home. Obviously, a lot of industries really flourish. Obviously other industries have their own challenges. We've seen a lot of things like click and collect has really come out as a big winner for a lot of people, a lot of stores are going to click and collect, a lot of supermarkets, a lot of restaurants, takeaways and all they are doing is they're doing click and collect. What are some of the newest trends that you've seen that have really spiked in the last four months, do you think will be here to stay, the changes that we are now, they are going to become the new normal on the digital side?
Daniel Peach:
Yeah. Unsurprisingly eCommerce has shot up. Stores being closed really shifted purchase behaviour. The most obvious one is groceries. A lot of people have finally started downloading apps. So in the UK, it's Ocado, it's ... I'm trying to think of some of the other ones. It's probably Amazon actually, a few other grocery delivery brands. And so that's been the most obvious one, but we've seen from a category level, an interesting pull forward, if you will, of home and garden. So as you said, DIY projects, but also outfitting the home office, outfitting the home gym. There's been a pull forward on that. And I think specifically for that category, if you think about it, bigger purchases will tend to be made in the summer.
Daniel Peach:
So seasonality is a bit different to say something like apparel, which may be also weighted toward the summer but have a big holidays, end of the year period. The question there is have people really shifted that ... have they maxed out on the purchases that they're going to make in Q1, Q2 or are there still things that have deferred down the line? We are talking about home buying and I was pleasantly surprised last week by Rishi Sunak's stamp holiday, really personally.
Richard Hill:
Yes, that's-
Daniel Peach:
... isn't usually appreciated.
Richard Hill:
That was a great day.
Daniel Peach:
Amazing, yeah. I mean, one of the best days I've had probably this year. But the other piece of that is, I think something like 5,000 pounds, maybe for green projects.
Richard Hill:
Yeah.
Daniel Peach:
There's an incentive and the question of whether the stamp duty holiday is really going to stimulate more house moves and house prices. We may see activity in home garden still.
Richard Hill:
Drive the purchases for home garden, yeah.
Daniel Peach:
Yeah. I think the other big trend ... I mean, apparel has been hit, which is not a surprise, people aren't really going out, and so they're not buying outfits, although that shifted slightly so people are buying more things they can wear in the house and a lot more informal wear, because they're not necessarily going to work.
Daniel Peach:
Yeah, exactly.
Richard Hill:
Fitness clothing has been strong, I think. Hasn't it? Or has it? A lot of people have been training at home and doing more workouts at home. Has fitness been a good category for the last two or three months?
Daniel Peach:
Yeah, it has been. And I mean, the telling sign to me is the number of friends that I have that have bought Peloton bikes. It's incredible. I mean, that business is ... business is doing exceptionally well, and something like that. I think they were ... I don't want to say they were struggling, but I know they were trying to figure out how to position themselves and I heard several podcasts maybe podcast about it.
Richard Hill:
You said PR challenges they had was at the beginning of the year, I think, yeah.
Daniel Peach:
Yeah, right. Yeah, so I think that category has been doing well. I think the other thing that we've seen, which is fascinating to me is, it sounds like a bit of a diminutive term. I don't think it's designed to be, but the idea of the silver surfers. So this would be people over the age of, you can define as 55, 60, 65, who may not have extensively bought or who may never have used eCommerce before. And the usage rates really spiked because the behaviour shifted entirely.
Richard Hill:
Yeah.
Daniel Peach:
Yeah, and it hasn't gone back to normal. I mean, we haven't gone back to normal, so it's not so surprising. But those rates are holding even as stores reopen, maybe.
Richard Hill:
Yeah, so that makes sense. And those who are probably using it for the first time are more hesitant prior to lockdown to use it, whereas now not a lot of option. And now they've crossed the line. It's like, oh actually, it's not that bad! Yeah, that's great, isn't it? That is really good out of these three, four months and moving forward, so that that generation are going to use the internet more now, almost being forced to use it and purchase more and yeah, I mean when you mentioned those brands you mentioned, so the stock values and some of that brand eCommerce, Shopify for example. That their stock, I think it's on the like from mid-March, just about three X now, 300%.
Daniel Peach:
Yeah.
Richard Hill:
It's just crazy now, the amount of people there that have then gone on to ... They were giving away six months of trial in Shopify, so then the amount of people that may have had it in their retail store, that they've had to then close in short term, then pops up with their eCommerce equivalent, just giving a lot of opportunity out there as well amongst all that craziness, so it's definitely industries that are really adapting well.
Daniel Peach:
Yeah. There's a lot of headroom there. I think one stat I saw, I think it's 52% of UK, small and medium sized businesses are online. So if you think about that, I mean, granted, you might have a pub, for instance, which is not likely to sell online, it's a very service based business. But if you think about a lot of stores that just maybe don't have the time or the capacity, or a baseline understanding of how to build out a website and how to create that channel, now is the best opportunity to do it. And you know, services like Magento, and Shopify and BigCommerce have made it a lot easier.
Richard Hill:
They certainly have, yeah. So final question, Daniel. I like to always end with a book recommendation. Do you have a book that you would recommend to our listeners?
Daniel Peach:
Yeah. I'm toggling between two right now, actually. So I tend to get a little bit bored, so I go back and forth. It's funny, it's been around for a while, but I've been reading Homo Deus, which is the sequel to Sapiens. really good book, really thought provoking, and it looks at ... from the agricultural revolution on how humans have evolved and what the future looks like, which is the idea that humans over time will seek longevity. So what does that look like, what does a human living 150 years or 200 years, what kind of impact does that have on society and on our infrastructure and that kind of thing.
Richard Hill:
I love it. That sounds very useful, very.
Daniel Peach:
Yeah.
Richard Hill:
I'll be straight on the Amazon checkout after this.
Daniel Peach:
Yeah, there you go. It's good. It's on there. The other one that I've been reading, which is a bit more topical, now is called Why I No Longer Talk to White People About Race. So this is a book, it's an author from the UK and so it's ... Whereas I think a lot of black history is centred and anchored on the US and Martin Luther King and Malcolm X and all of that. This is really squarely focused on the UK, so it's been a nice education in the experience of black people living in the UK. And something I'd recommend.
Richard Hill:
We've got two recommendations there. Fantastic.
Daniel Peach:
Yeah, highly encourage you. Yeah.
Richard Hill:
That's great. So, the guys listening in and they want to connect with you Daniel, what's the best place to connect with you directly?
Daniel Peach:
Yeah, I'd say LinkedIn. I tend to monitor it pretty closely. I think it's linkedin.com/danielpeach, but either way you can find me on there. So yeah, by all means, I'd love to connect.
Richard Hill:
Well, we'll link it up in the show notes. So this podcast will go live in a couple of weeks, and it will be a full transcription podcast, and then we'll link up the books and your LinkedIn profile as well. Well, thank you very much, Daniel for coming on the podcast. It's been an absolute pleasure.
Daniel Peach:
Yeah. Thank you so much. I appreciate the time.