Street Fight Daily: Tommy Bahama’s CEO Talks Local Tech, Consumers Warm to Voice

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

Big Brands, Local Perspectives: Tommy Bahama (Street Fight)
Doug Wood, CEO of Tommy Bahama, cites systems that don’t talk to or easily integrate with one another as his company’s biggest technological challenge right now. The company, like many multi-store retailers, is investing in and focusing on tying its brick-and-mortar and online businesses together.

Report: Consumers Warm to Voice, Demand More Integrated Experiences (Street Fight)
Both voice device ownership and voice shopping activity have nearly doubled in the past six months, with 17% of shoppers now owning a voice device and 42% of those device owners using voice to shop, a report by Narvar found.

Why Tech Firms Get Most of the Money From Programmatic Buys (eMarketer)
About a year and a half ago, The Guardian caused a ruckus in the marketing tech industry when it announced that it received only 30% of the ad dollars advertisers spent on its site programmatically. According to a recent study, The Guardian’s experience isn’t that unusual.

The Retail Industry Is Focusing on Customer Experience and Convenience to Win in E-Commerce (AdWeek)
Because ecommerce only makes up a sliver of transactions, digital retailers that have mastered data and analytics, like Everlane, Walmart-owned Bonobos and Amazon, are now setting up physical stores that encourage consumers to stroll through and touch products.

Google Expands Its Tool for Publishers to Combat Ad Blocking (Digiday)
Called Funding Choices, the tool works by asking or requiring users to turn off their ad blockers after seeing a given number of articles.

Publishers Worry About the Future of Snapchat Discover Post-Redesign (NYMag)
Since the app was redesigned, publishers say numbers have been disconcertingly all over the place — so all over the place, in fact, that Snap has quietly invited publishers on both coasts to attend daylong summits this month to hopefully sort things out.

Brands Think Outside the Box With OOH-Triggered Retargeting (AdExchanger)
Billboards aren’t a one-to-one media, unless we’re talking about “Three Billboards Outside of Ebbing, Missouri.” But advertisers are starting to inform their online retargeting efforts with offline exposure data.

Walmart Is Making Its Website a Little Less Like Walmart (WSJ)
Walmart wants its website to look less like a Walmart store. The retailer plans to redesign the site next month by decluttering the product listings, de-emphasizing the Walmart name and using a lot less bright blue.