Location Weekly: FCC Fines Location Data Purveyors; Adidas Taps WhatsApp for Mobile Marketing

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In this episode of Location Weekly, the Location-Based Marketing Association covers the FCC proposing hefty fines on mobile operators for selling location data, Apple turning your photo into a car key, Adidas tapping WhatsApp to reach consumers, KFC Canada integrating Google Maps and Assistant, Uber offering car-top signage for new driver revenue, and JCDecaux leveraging facial recognition for Yoplait in Australia.

AR in Local Commerce: Google Shows the Way

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Mike Boland: A recent and relatively understated development from Google could portend the future of augmented reality. Its previously teased “VPS” was released into the wild for a small set of users. For those unfamiliar, VPS (visual positioning service) guides users with 3D overlays on upheld smartphone screens. Sort of a cousin of AR, this type of experience could represent the sector’s eventual killer apps. Though we’ve seen the most AR success so far in gaming (Pokemon Go) and social (Snapchat AR lenses), it could be more mundane utilities like navigation that engender high-frequency use cases.

LBMA Vidcast: Coachella and Amazon Lockers, DoorDash Raises $500M

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On this week’s Location-Based Marketing Association podcast: Coachella + Amazon Lockers, Colruyt uses Google Assistant, DoorDash raises $500M, Kroger launches mobile pay app, Crate & Barrel + Handy. Special co-host: Carsten Szameitat.

Superbowl Ad Roundup: The Local Edition

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Several Superbowl ads touched on key themes in local such as multi-location brand advertisers (Burger King) and locally relevant technology like voice search (Amazon Alexa). And of course, there were lots of car commercials—an inherently local product category given the offline shopping component. 

Building the Location Layer: A Conversation with Foursquare

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Last week, location technology company Foursquare announced its new Pinpoint audience segments product. Building from its large corpus of data on places, spatial movements and behavioral patterns, Pinpoint represents the latest in Foursquare’s evolution as the “location layer,” for the internet. We got the chance to sit down with Foursquare CEO Jeff Glueck in San Francisco to find out more. Here is the full interview. 

Google and Amazon Escalate Voice ‘Platform Wars’

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Mike Boland: Any entity competing for local commerce—publishers, brands, ad-tech players—has a looming platform choice for voice. Like the platform wars between iOS and Android, it’s a matter of deciding where to apply finite resources and development muscle. Maybe the answer is “both” Google and Amazon. But for now, Google appears to have the lead.

Why Google Decided Phone Calls Are the Key to Google Assistant’s Future Success

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Among all the new AI-driven capabilities Google could’ve bestowed on its powerful Assistant, the company decided to focus on one capability in particular: a phone call.

#SFSNYC: Making Conversational Interfaces the Frontline for Customer Interaction

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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 for brands and local businesses to address.

Street Fight Daily: Google Assistant Fuels Hyperlocal Biz, Inside the Digital Content Bubble

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Time Out Plans to Use Google Assistant to Grow to Connect Users with Local Businesses (Digiday) City guide Time Out has developed an app for Google Assistant through which people can ask up to 100 questions about what to do in their city. Time […]

Street Fight Daily: Snap Valuation Jumps to $34 Billion, SMBs Shift Marketing Spend to Digital

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Snapchat Shares Surge 44% in Market Debut… Small Businesses Shift Marketing Spend to Digital… For Quartz, Bots Are a Chance to Build a New Path for Interacting with News…

Street Fight Daily: Washington Post Revamps Digital Ads, Bad Mobile Experiences Hurt Brands

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Google and Postmates Make the Case for SMB Deliveries… The Washington Post Introduces “Fuse,” New Tech for Ads Across All Post Platforms… Why Google Beat Yahoo in the War for the Internet…

Street Fight Daily: Microsoft Building Its Own Bot, UberMedia Expanding Attribution Business

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Walmart Outperforms Estimates, but Online Retail Lags… Looking for a Sustainable Business Model for a Regional Newspaper? Start at the Star Tribune… Microsoft is Building Its Own Bot to Rival Google Assistant and Viv…

Street Fight Daily: Google Debuts Assistant, Investors Losing Interest in Delivery

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Meet Google Assistant: A New Search Platform, Rather Than A Gadget or an App… Swirl Looks to Close the Digital Divide Between E-Commerce and Physical Stores