A few weeks ago, Black Friday was the latest in a long tradition of innovations designed to encourage us to shop more and spend more (although if it goes the way of its more established US cousin, the British version will have to be renamed Black Eye Friday).
The retail sector prides itself quite rightly on its ability to stay ahead of – or, indeed to dictate – technological and societal trends.
Retail not only helps shape our lives, it has a huge part to play in the way our high streets look. Now, of course, retail is also helping to dictate the shape of the digital domain.
But alongside all this change, there are elements of continuity – and retail's relationship with newsbrands is one of them.
In the pre-dotcom retail era, newspapers had a mutually beneficial bond (focusing on the weekend, but not exclusively so) with TV when it came to retail.
Retailers would bring out their big-gun TV ads at peak time on Friday and the message would be reinforced in the Saturday and Sunday newspapers.
In recent times, it has been too easy to assume that this sort of relationship is a thing of the past. Nothing could be further from the truth.
The reality is that, just as retail has become a hybrid phenomenon, allying the best of bricks-and-mortar retail to the power of digital shopping, we have also emerged as the most potent cross-platform medium.
And the digital retail figures continue to fascinate. According to numbers produced by Weve, 88% of smartphone owners are now using their phones in their shopping routines – and those routines are by no means easy to predict these days, especially where digital is concerned.
For instance, some analysts believe "webrooming" (researching on-screen, buying in-store) is set to become more popular than "showrooming" (researching in-store, buying online).
Also, tablets (and now "phablets") are becoming the screens people most like to use when they're in shopping mode – they're portable, yet their screens are big enough to convey compelling product detail and facilitate meaningful choices.
Obviously that's music to our ears – because readers love accessing newsbrands on their tablets too.
In other words, we're ideally placed to deliver against integrated retail marketing strategies. Never before has it been so important to deliver the right message in the right environment to the right audience, both in print and on digital screens.
And, just as it was in the pre-dotcom days, ads in news environments tend to score highly against measures of "believability" and "trustworthiness."
Newsbrands are a key environment in which to build on the emotional connections established with consumers on TV and other video platforms.
That's certainly how market leaders like John Lewis continue to use the medium. Though it's the advertiser best known for its Christmas TV work, John Lewis spends as much on newsbrands as it does on TV.
In a presentation at Newsworks’ Shift 2014 conference earlier this year, adam&eveDDB's James Murphy and Manning Gottlieb OMD's Tim Pearson outlined the way their client uses newsbrands to deliver a broad spectrum of comms, from the emotional right through to the expected rational messages.
The audience profiles offered by the medium continue to be attractive too.
In recent years, John Lewis's spend with newsbrands has continued to rise. And it's hardly alone in this – just on the numbers alone, we can present a compelling case. Data from comScore confirms that newsbrands and online retailers have a very large shared audience, with newsbrands over-indexing on a wide range of retail sites.
More than 41 million people read a newsbrand each month while 18 million of them read newsbrands online.
Newspaper readers are over 20% more likely to visit Asda, Tesco, Sainsbury's and Waitrose online shopping sites than the average online user.
And there's more. At least 60% of visitors to Asda, Tesco, Sainsbury's and Waitrose online shopping sites are online newspaper readers.
79% of people who visit a newsbrand through their mobile browser also visit retail sites on their phone. Finally, people are more likely to find out about the websites they regularly use through press ads than from any other type of advertising.
Retailers appreciate our commitment to innovation and product development too. After all, everyone can learn a thing or two about innovation from the likes of a John Lewis.
As a company it's rather good at embracing new developments without compromising on quality or brand values.
Just look at what did with Black Friday. Its own version of the event helped it deliver its biggest sales week on record. And not a black eye in sight.
Vanessa Clifford, deputy chief executive of Newsworks.