Street Fight Happenings
January Focus: Pursuing Privacy
As we straddle the precipice of a new year and a new decade, the next milestone in privacy legislation looms: the California Consumer Privacy Act. As California’s version of GDPR, it is the first major US privacy legislation. It will set a precedent and kick-start a domino effect for other states and may even lead to federal data privacy moves.
“Pursuing privacy” will be Street Fight’s editorial focus for the month of January. You may have noticed our monthly themes: December focused on the connected consumer, November’s focused on holiday shopping, October on local commerce verticals, and September on mapping (more on those in a bit).
December Focus: The Connected Consumer
When looking at several interlocking tech trends — wearables, IoT, smart devices, autonomous vehicles — one common thread emerges: our escalating connectivity as humans. All these technologies are increasingly melded with our senses as the computing “abstraction layer” diminishes.
In other words, device interfaces continue to get more intuitive and automatic. That can be seen in the progression of personal computing from UI milestones like the mouse to mobile-centric touch controls. Now, we have biometric tracking on the Apple Watch and ambient alerts to AirPods.
The “connected consumer” will be Street Fight’s editorial focus for the month of December.
Street Fight Unveils Innovator Award Winners
Street Fight’s charter is to educate the world on the innovation and best practices in local media, advertising, and commerce. And a key corollary to that mission is to recognize and award the innovators driving these sectors.
With that backdrop, today we officially announce the winners of the Street Fight Innovator Awards. Spanning 12 categories that represent the top battlegrounds in local commerce, winners embody the best of innovation and achievement in these areas (full list below).
Theme of the Month: Pursuing Privacy
Back to Basics: Data Collection in the New Privacy Era
Some widely used marketing methods, like firmographics and psychographics, are coming to a halt as brands are forced to consider whether consumers actually want to receive their messages. In place of those practices, marketers are returning to older forms of data collection to once again create differentiated customer experiences, explains Dawn Colossi, chief marketing officer at the market research technology company FocusVision.
“I think with digital transformation came the notion that brand marketing didn’t matter as much because you could just target your audience,” says Colossi. “But with limitations on targeting and spamming, getting your brand known for things that customers care about—and this comes from understanding how they think and feel—will be crucial for marketers.”
6 Privacy Tools for CCPA Compliance
With the clock ticking on full enforcement of CCPA, businesses are looking at how they can get into compliance—and fast. Technology vendors have been quick to step in and fill that void, launching integrated privacy management platforms with CCPA and the European Union’s GDPR in mind. Most of these platforms can be configured to specific privacy regulations, helping businesses automate their data collection practices and regularly performing risk assessments to determine whether they’re handling personal data correctly.
Here are six examples of tools that companies can use to ensure CCPA compliance.
Telnet Passwords Leaked for Half a Million IoT Devices, Servers, Routers
The breach is particularly significant given the rapid expansion of smart or IoT devices. Given that consumers already struggle to secure basic electronic devices including laptops and smartphones, the Telnet breach indicates how much larger the security risk for personal devices may become in coming years as smart speakers, TVs, and fridges join the legion of devices open to hackers.
Latest Posts
Video Trends For 2020 All Consumer-Facing Brands Need To Know
Video is already an effective and established form of content for consumer-facing brands. But as a content format, it has undergone dramatic developments in recent years, changes that look set to continue in 2020. The new year will feature more personalized videos, long-form experimentation, 360-degree footage, and shoppable images.
Read on to learn more about the video trends for 2020 your brand needs to know.
Back to Basics: Data Collection in the New Privacy Era
Some widely used marketing methods, like firmographics and psychographics, are coming to a halt as brands are forced to consider whether consumers actually want to receive their messages. In place of those practices, marketers are returning to older forms of data collection to once again create differentiated customer experiences, explains Dawn Colossi, chief marketing officer at the market research technology company FocusVision.
“I think with digital transformation came the notion that brand marketing didn’t matter as much because you could just target your audience,” says Colossi. “But with limitations on targeting and spamming, getting your brand known for things that customers care about—and this comes from understanding how they think and feel—will be crucial for marketers.”
LBMA Presents Location Weekly: Google Buys Pointy; TourByLocal Nabs $25M
We start off with TourByLocal getting $25M to match tourists with 4,000 guides in 162 countries, Albertsons launching Pinterest-Powered In-Store mobile recipes, and Google buying Pointy to boost brick&mortar retail.
After the Worldline interview from NRF, we continue with news from our two member companies: Gimbal giving mobile users control over their location data and Delta reducing travel stress with updated app features.
Mobile Marketing Firm Verve Acquired by Germany’s MGI
The companies underscored Verve’s location data-driven ability to drive prospective customers into brick-and-mortar stores, adding a cutting-edge ad tech capability to MGI’s suite of existing media solutions. Verve will also help the European enterprise increase its presence in North America.
6 Privacy Tools for CCPA Compliance
With the clock ticking on full enforcement of CCPA, businesses are looking at how they can get into compliance—and fast. Technology vendors have been quick to step in and fill that void, launching integrated privacy management platforms with CCPA and the European Union’s GDPR in mind. Most of these platforms can be configured to specific privacy regulations, helping businesses automate their data collection practices and regularly performing risk assessments to determine whether they’re handling personal data correctly.
Here are six examples of tools that companies can use to ensure CCPA compliance.
OTT Will Transform How Local Businesses Connect with Their Customers
When looking out into 2020 through a local media lens, advertisers trying to reach hyper-local audiences will continue to lean in and adopt more digital and over-the-top practices. No longer will businesses consider OTT an add-on to their media plans; rather, it will become the centerpiece to reach local audiences who are turning to free streaming services and apps to watch news and entertainment.
Here are our four top predictions for 2020.
Foot Traffic Data Shows Signs of Retail Apocalypse Can Speak to Smart Retail Strategy
Over the last year, we saw many well-known brands close their doors and scale back their offline footprints. While many believed this to be a sign of weakness, it was, in fact, a sign of a very effective corporate strategy.
Retailers such as Macy’s and Walmart both faced multiple closures in 2019, but when digging deeper and analyzing specific store locations, we uncover a much more informative narrative than simple brick-and-mortar decline.
Heard on the Street, Episode 43: Inferring User Intent with Viral Gains
One elusive component of effective marketing is knowing what consumers are thinking. But even with advances in AI, traditional ad targeting practices often commit basic errors like showing people the same ad several times … even though they may not be interested in any way in the product in question.
This is the area where Viral Gains is innovating. The latest guest on Street Fight’s Heard on the Street podcast, Viral Gains CEO Tod Loofbourrow tells us how his longstanding affinity for robotics and AI has influenced his path to solving this problem by better inferring intent and consumer sentiment.
Three Essential Steps toward Omnichannel Success
Consumers have limited time, detectable habits, and preferences about how they interact with brands. Marketers have become increasingly empowered to know and respond to these preferences on all channels.
As brands leverage opportunities offered by omnichannel marketing and further embrace the technology that unlocks each channel’s capabilities and insights, they will give customers the personal experiences they crave. Beginning the journey toward true omnichannel can be daunting, but the immense value it creates for both customers and brands far outweighs the rethinking, reinvention, and innovations it demands.
With Investment in Geo, Foursquare Focuses on Improving Data Access
When it comes to location data specifically, Senior VP of Product Josh Cohen is seeing Foursquare’s partners put more emphasis on the quality of data. The company’s partners are developing more sophisticated understandings of the range of data quality when it comes to location, which means Foursquare has to dedicate more resources to make sure new industry-wide expectations are met.
Street Fight’s Big 3
Street Fight Columns
Video Trends For 2020 All Consumer-Facing Brands Need To Know