Street Fight Daily: Snap’s Secret User Data Paints a Dismal Picture, Mobile Shopping on the Rise

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

Snap Employees Leak Data That Doesn’t Bode Well for the Secretive Company (Daily Beast)
The Daily Beast reviewed five months of confidential DAU metrics for nearly every feature in the app, including Snap Maps, Discover, Memories, Geofilters, Lenses, Chat, Audio, and Stories. The upshot is not encouraging. TechCrunch: What is Snap now that Story sharing has stopped growing?

Why Location Is a Competitive Edge For National Retailers (Street Fight)
We recently caught up with LocalSEOGuide’s CEO Andrew Shotland whose recent ranking factors report finds that national brands’ migration to local search, especially multi-location retailers. Focused erstwhile on e-commerce, competitive pressure has compelled them to view their locations as an edge in local search.

Mobile Shopping Saw a Steep Jump Over the Holidays (AdWeek)
Two key lessons from 2017: Mobile shopping continued to rise, and personalized product recommendations grew. 50 percent of orders were done on phones on Dec. 25, compared with less than 40 percent in 2016.

5 Retailers Tapping Voice-Controlled Assistants for Frictionless Shopping (Street Fight)
According to a survey by Linc and BrandGarage, one-in-five retailers already believes voice will be an important channel within two years, and 44% of retailers that are increasing their use of AI say they’re doing so through conversational commerce interfaces, Here’s how five major retailers are harnessing the technology.

Verizon’s Oath Explores the Drivers Behind ‘Brand Love’ (MediaPost)
Culling data from more than 150,000 consumers in 13 countries, the company evaluated six drivers (such as how well brands exceed needs, set trends, share values, build trust, elevate experiences and respect consumers) to drive deeper consumer connections. 

For Ad Buyers, a Tale of Two Identity Graphs Emerges in 2018 (eMarketer)
Over the past couple of years, identity graphs—and all the audience data needed to power them—have become critical to see what individual consumers do across their devices. But attitudes toward this data vary throughout the industry. 

Will Cosmetics Get an Amazon Makeover? (Bloomberg)
For beauty companies, image is everything. For Amazon—which made a name for itself based on assortment, price, and speedy delivery—not so much.

How Volkswagen Is Using AI for Ad-Buying Decisions (Digiday)
Cars aren’t the only thing Volkswagen wants to automate. Artificial intelligence is managing the brand’s media buys in Germany and proving to be more effective than its media agency.

Facebook Is Devising Its Own Smart Device for Homes (Quartz)
Facebook’s product, a voice-enabled video chat device named Portal, will directly compete with Amazon’s Echo product line to enter consumer homes.

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