Will Consumer Privacy Be the Defining Issue of 2019?

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Though their terms are not identical, in essence both GDPR and CCPA are designed to give consumers the power to stop companies from collecting personal data, to review all personal data a company may have collected, and to request deletion of any stored data. Both regulations strike a major blow in favor of the concept that ownership of personal data ultimately resides with the individual and not with companies who may profit from it.

Efficacy of Google Posts Drops Following Relegation to Bottom of Knowledge Panel

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Following a seemingly arbitrary choice on Google’s part to move Posts to the bottom of the Knowledge Panel, their efficacy in boosting businesses’ local search presence seems to be dropping.

LBMA Podcast: Burger King Swipes McDonald’s Customers, Target Experiments with AR

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On this week’s LBMA podcast: AdMov, Xamoom celebrates “Silent Night,” Burger King swipes McDonald’s customers, Dunkin’ fools Portland, MA, Stella Artois’ beer-serving robot, Target selling Christmas trees with AR.

Cybersecurity Firm DEVCON Says It Can Knock Out ‘Bad Ads’ Costing Publishers Billions

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In this Q&A, cyber-security company DEVCON co-founder and CEO Maggie Louie details how she says her company halts “bad ads” before they victimize publishers and their readers.

dataPlor: The Importance of Personal Relationships and Other Key Findings from Emerging Market Small Business Survey

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At dataPlor, we know that the best way to gather data and insights on emerging market small businesses is in person. We sent our general manager in Guadalajara out on a mission to understand how hyperlocal businesses communicate with customers and potential business partners and suppliers. He spent a week speaking first-hand to small business owners about their customer outreach strategies and how they chose potential businesses partners. Here’s what we found.

Retail as a Service: Amazon will Create (and Destroy) with Cashierless Checkout Solution

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Mike Boland: The innovation including and surrounding cashierless checkout goes beyond payments to affect a broader set of functions like supply chain, inventory management, and store layouts. It’s like a retail toolkit in a box, with cash-flow friendly pricing, à la SaaS. You may have heard of it: It’s called retail as a service (RaaS), and it could transform the next decade of retail. Amazon will lead the way.

Beyond Proximity Offers: The Second Act of Beacons is Underway

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Beacons have grown into a nuanced component of successful mobile marketing. We’ve learned what they do best—strengthen advertiser approaches to metrics and measurement as well as the relevance and contextual richness of on-the-ground, in- or near-store experiences—and we’ve figured out that while push notifications can be a part of the story, they aren’t the main narrative.

Digital Ad Trends to Watch in 2019, Mobile to Account for 71% of Digital Ad Spend

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Programmatic SSP Pubmatic released on Tuesday morning an elaborate report detailing digital ad trends to watch in 2019. The highlights include a look into how mobile, video, and of course programmatic itself will continue to evolve in the coming year, reshaping the way brands reach customers.

Location Data Industry Gets Huge Wake-Up Call on Monday

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Platforms, brands, and vendors benefiting from the reams of location data used to hit consumers with highly targeted ads should be paying attention to a change suggested by Google and Facebook’s appearances before government authorities, a New York Times exposé out Monday, and most importantly the impending arrival of GDPR-like legislation in the United States: 2019 will be the year privacy actually matters, posing a potentially devastating threat to the status quo of the location-based data and marketing industries.

How to Better Connect with Consumers via Mobile Coupons

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Dan Slavin: It’s not just smartphone use that is growing—the number of people totally dependent on these devices to access the internet is rising as well. Both segments are projected to continue to show strong growth. Yet some marketers and retailers are struggling with attracting these users with offers and coupons.

Evolving Our Lens for Local Ranking Factors

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Blumenthal and Mihm: We in the Local Search industry are not served by relying so heavily on traditional SEO logic and tools—in our approach to the Local Pack, our understanding of the ranking factors, and even what we suggest to clients as appropriate activities.

Consumers’ Reliance on Online Reviews, Evolving Rapidly, Is Reshaping Local Search

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Recommendations gradually exchanged in person are now flooding webpages, most notably Google’s SERPs. Twenty-seven percent of consumers are now reading reviews of local businesses every day, marking a staggering jump from just 12% in 2017, according to a recent report.

LBMA Podcast: Spent Retail Analytics, Reveal Mobile Black Friday Report

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On this week’s LBMA show: Spent retail analytics, LinkSure free global WiFi, Casino competes with AmazonGo in France, McDonald’s dancing in the streets of Bogata, Shopkick + Unilever & Walmart, Verve + AdCouncil for Goodwill. Special Research—Reveal Mobile Black Friday Report.

Firefly, Mounting Ad Displays to Ubers, Comes Out of Stealth with $21.5M

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Firefly, a new digital ad company, hopes to provide Uber drivers with another way to make money as they drive. The startup has quietly assembled a fleet of close to 1,000 Uber drivers in San Francisco and Los Angeles who have been mounting ad displays to the top of their vehicles.

Mike Ragsdale Says Putting Community First Makes His ‘Indie’ 30A Site a Big Winner

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In this Q&A, 30A founder Mike Ragsdale itemizes what he thinks his industry is doing wrong and how 30A, by making community paramount, has become the top revenue-producing site among independents.

RhythmOne Introduces Linear TV Attribution Partnership with Placed

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Marketing technology end-to-end platform RhythmOne announced an expansion of its relationship with attribution solution Placed this week, incorporating linear tv measurements into their already existing partnership.

Heard on the Street, Episode 17: Local SEO and Seeing the Matrix, with Andrew Shotland

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What are the latest developments in local search ranking factors and SEO? These were a few topics we batted around with Local SEO Guide CEO Andrew Shotland on the latest episode of Street Fight’s Heard on the Street podcast.

Google Local Services Reportedly Expand to Canada, Signaling Rapid Growth

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Launch in 2015 in Silicon Valley’s home court, Local Service Ads have since expanded to a whopping 90 markets in the U.S. and are now making their way abroad, where searches for local services are abundant.

The Numbers on Mobile’s Role in Holiday Shopping This Season

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The results of a survey released just last week by mobile ad firm AdColony go beyond the already stale proclamation that the mobile revolution has taken over retail, pointing instead to granular details about just how consumers are using mobile today. We provide the highlights.

5 Ways Businesses Can Leverage Location Intelligence Beyond Marketing

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Michelle Zhou: Location data can provide far better optics into consumer behavior than traditional data streams. Data from smartphones, social media, and other sources can track consumer purchases and migration in real time. Using data trends and insights, businesses can develop a comprehensive understanding of their customers and make the most informed business decisions.