Street Fight Daily: Highlights from Street Fight Summit, Advertisers Drop DSPs to Cut Costs

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology…

#SFSNYC: The Growing Power of SMB OS (Street Fight)
Until recently, brick-and-mortar shopping relied on the digital world for advertising functions and not much else. But now, local retail has a new digital arena—the full-service operating system. Three leaders in this expanding set of technological solutions for SMBs laid out the state of the field, known as SMB OS, at Street Fight Summit in New York Wednesday.

#SFSNYC: Investors Weigh in on Billion-Dollar Opportunities in Local (Street Fight)
Long before startups become the “next big thing” the masses talk about, investors have an opportunity to use their wallets to weigh in on the prospects for those emerging companies. Investors pointed to voice, VR and AR, and influencers as some hot topics in local venture capital right now.

Advertisers Cut DSPs 40% Over Two Years (eMarketer)
Two years ago, on average, advertisers ran at least 1% of their ad spend through about seven different DSPs each month. Now, however, they only use about four DSPs per month, according to the study.

#SFSNYC: Moving Beyond Basic Location-Based Advertising Without Getting Creepy (Street Fight)
In regard to guidelines pertaining to the ethical use of location data, Mark Risis, head of global data partnerships at IBM Watson, offered the following maxim: “Don’t do creepy stuff.” Risis as well as panelists from Zocdoc and Waze addressed the topic of location-based marketing and ethics.

#SFSNYC: UPS, TripAdvisor, and HappyOrNot Break Down Divergent Approaches to Customer Feedback (Street Fight)
Consumer feedback and brands have a complex and sometimes contentious relationship. Three panelists from companies with starkly different relationships to both their customers and the customer feedback process provided their angles on the issue at Street Fight Summit.

Facebook Finally Monetizes Marketplace with Ads from Users and Brands (TechCrunch)
Facebook on Wednesday began testing Marketplace ads in the U.S. that let average users pay to “Boost” their listing to more people through the News Feed. While they’re easy for novices, requiring buyers to only set a budget and how long the ads will run, there are no additional targeting options beyond being shown to age 18+ users in nearby ZIP codes. Recode: Facebook’s latest drama is a reminder of one of its biggest failures

In the GDPR Era, Contextual Marketing Is Making a Comeback (Digiday)
With so much market uncertainty surrounding the impact of GDPR, many ad buyers are reluctant to take risks with data-heavy audience targeting techniques. But contextual targeting, where ads are targeted to individuals based on the context of what they’re looking at on page, is suddenly looking a lot more appealing—and safer.

#SFSNYC: May AI Help You? The Marketing Opportunities in Intelligent Search (Street Fight)
Increasingly conversational, intelligent, and visual, search engines are adapting to become the centerpiece of consumer engagement, as well as a virtually new tool for marketers. Purna Virji, senior manager for global engagement at Microsoft/Bing, broke down the AI revolution in search on Wednesday.

Instagram to Debut Snapchat Discover-Like Feature (Axios)
Instagram (and Facebook more broadly) has not been shy about copying Snapchat’s popular features. The new section could also help Instagram better compete with YouTube and Snapchat for professional video content from creators.

#SFSNYC: Making Conversational Interfaces the Frontline for Customer Interaction (Street Fight)
The development of conversational language to interact with chatbots, digital assistants, smart devices, and other machines is changing the ways consumers make use of such platforms to find the information and services they want—and this change is only going to get more important.

AI Piques Marketers’ Interest, But Adoption Is Slow Elsewhere (AdExchanger)
Artificial intelligence (AI) adoption is relatively modest across large enterprises, but marketing and sales organizations are embracing the technology most quickly.

CMOs Rank Email as No. 4 Channel (MediaPost)
Social media tops the digital channel list, with 79% ranking it as extremely or very important. Search is next at 73%, and online video comes in third at 63%. In contrast, 59% say the same about email.