Street Fight Daily: Google Introduces ‘Ad Strength’ Metric, What Brand Marketers See in AI

TODAY IN LOCAL & DIGITAL MARKETING

Google Introduces ‘Ad Strength,’ New Metric to Assess Relevance of Ad Copy (MediaPost)
Some 91% of mobile users buy or plan to buy something after seeing an ad they describe as relevant, according to Google data. Google on Monday introduced new insights and best practices that allow marketers to put metrics behind the relevance.

Survey: Multi-Location Brands Warm to AI, See It as Most Useful for Email (Street Fight)
Multi-location brands are almost twice as interested in exploring artificial intelligence for analytics as they were last year, according to Street Fight’s latest survey. But there’s a significant disconnect between their perception of what’s most useful about AI and what suppliers of local marketing tech and services think about that same question.

Tech Industry Pursues a Federal Privacy Law on Its Own Terms (NYT)
In recent months, Facebook, Google, IBM, Microsoft and others have aggressively lobbied officials in the Trump administration and elsewhere to start outlining a federal privacy law, according to administration officials and the companies.

How Brand Marketers Can Capture Consumer Attention on Mobile (Street Fight)
With mobile ad spend set to surpass television for the first time this year, brand marketers are in a frenzy looking for smarter ways to generate the highest possible ROI from their investments. The problem, it seems, is that many brand marketers aren’t fully comfortable with mobile strategy.

THE MARKETING LANDSCAPE

Amazon Is Breaking New Ground in AdTech with ‘Video in Search’ (MTA)
Amazon is all set to test mobile video ad placements in product search pages – a bold step in taking its advertising business to new heights, in clear competition with Google and Facebook.

In-House Agencies on the Rise as Advertisers Seek Services Closer to Home (WSJ)
In-house advertising agencies are on the rise as marketers look for more effective and cost-efficient ad models, according to a new study from Forrester and the In-house Agency Forum, which represents hundreds of large brands that have their own internal agency groups.

MAKING FRIENDS

Continuing Charm Offensive, Facebook Creates Tool to Boost New Publishers (Digiday)
The organic content testing tool lets publishers test up to four versions of a piece of content, with variations in elements like headline, description and image, in real time—something publishers would otherwise have to pay for by boosting a post.

Toyota Invests $500 Million in Uber (TechCrunch)
Toyota and Uber are partnering to bring an on-demand autonomous ride-hailing service to market, a deal that includes a $500 million investment from the Japanese automaker.