Street Fight Daily: Semcasting Debuts Attribution Solution, Mobile Coupons An Opportunity for Holidays

TODAY IN LOCAL & DIGITAL MARKETING AND MEDIA

Semcasting Offers Proof of Performance with New Attribution Platform (Street Fight)
Walled gardens have traditionally prevented marketers from using attribution for audience verification, similar to viewability or fraud detection, but a new platform from the data-as-a-service company Semcasting is changing that.

Data Still Makes Ads Irrelevant, Consumers Say (Search Engine Land)
When consumers were asked in a recent survey how effective brands have been in using data to personalize digital advertising campaigns, only 18% said ads “often” seemed to understand their needs. Some 47% report that ads seem to understand their needs at least “sometimes,” 26% said online ads “hardly ever” understand them, and 9% said they “never” understand them.

Use Mobile Coupons to Get Above the Noise this Holiday Season (Street Fight)
Dan Slavin: Since many retailers use the same strategies and tactics to capture consumer attention during the holidays, rising above the noise happens only for a few. This may be the season to plan smarter, not louder, and the answer may be the use of mobile coupons.

How Walmart Is Using First-Party Data to Stand Out in Ad-Supported Video (Digiday)
If Amazon is trying to make a run at Facebook’s and Google’s digital ad duopoly, then Walmart is trying to make a run at its main commerce rival. Walmart’s streaming video service, Vudu, is becoming a more important part of that effort.

Amazon’s HQ2 Announcement Is Imminent. Here’s a Look at the Final Contenders. (Recode)
After more than a year of fanfare, competition and city government prostrations, Amazon’s announcement of its second headquarters location is imminent. While Amazon has been mum about the winning city, plenty of people have placed their bets.

Facebook Security Breach Led to Leak of Millions of Phone Numbers, Email Addresses (CNBC)
The company said hackers used 400,000 accounts under their control to gain the access tokens of 30 million Facebook users, according to a blog post. Access tokens are used by Facebook users to log into their accounts without having to type in their passwords.

Sears, the Original Everything Store, Files for Bankruptcy (NYT)
The company had long ago given up its mantle as a retail innovator. It was overtaken first by big box retailers like Walmart and Home Depot and then, by Amazon as the go-to shopping destinations for clothing, tools and appliances.

Uber’s Secret Weapon? A Team of Economics PhDs (Quartz)
Uber is so fond of economists that it employs more than a dozen PhDs from top programs at its San Francisco headquarters. The group acts as an in-house think tank for Uber, gathering facts from quants and data scientists and synthesizing them to arm the lobbyists and policy folks who fight some of Uber’s biggest battles.