Home Services Marketing Is Moving Beyond Search
Home services marketing has traditionally been built around capturing consumers when a local need turns into a search. Scorpion brought together OpenAI, TikTok, ServiceTitan and others to reflect on how that acquisition model is expanding as AI discovery, short-form video and operational data reshape the path from awareness to booked job. For home services brands, […]
DOOH Is Becoming a Local Conversion Channel
Digital out-of-home advertising has traditionally benefited from proximity. Put an ad near a restaurant, retailer or dealership and the physical location itself becomes part of the media strategy. Programmatic DOOH is making that relationship more precise. New research from Vistar Media, Omnicom Media and Annalect finds that something as simple as telling consumers where to […]
Sonic Turns Drink Customization Into Traffic Strategy
Restaurant chains are increasingly looking beyond burgers, sandwiches and value meals to create new reasons for customers to visit. Specialty beverages have emerged as one of the industry’s most active battlegrounds, and Sonic Drive-In believes its long history of drink customization gives it an advantage. The trend extends well beyond another seasonal menu cycle. The […]
Programmatic DOOH Still Isn’t Bought Like Digital
Programmatic DOOH (digital out-of-home) has spent years promising to make physical media easier to buy like digital advertising. New global data suggests that transition is well underway, but also shows how far DOOH still has to go before it becomes a routine component of the digital media plan. The World Out of Home Organization’s inaugural […]
Lowe’s Is Merging Marketing With Commerce
Lowe’s has made an organizational change that says more about the future of multi-location marketing than a typical executive promotion. The home-improvement retailer has expanded CMO Jen Wilson’s role to include Lowes.com and its third-party marketplace. Wilson, now executive vice president and chief marketing and digital commerce officer, already oversaw marketing, loyalty, personalization and Lowe’s […]
MULO Brands Are Reinvesting in Human Service
For years, the direction of store and restaurant technology seemed clear: move more transactions into apps, kiosks and self-checkout, and ask employees to do less of the routine work. That investment has made many visits faster. It has also made the human service interactions that remain more consequential. Aritzia, Macy’s and McDonald’s are approaching that […]
Yelp Moves Voice AI From Conversation to Conversion
Yelp and Hatch are among the first platforms integrating OpenAI’s GPT-Live-1, giving restaurant and service-business callers more natural conversations with AI. The resulting voice AI is connecting conversational models with the location data, business rules and operating systems required to turn a call into a booking. Voice AI is getting better at sounding human. OpenAI’s […]
The Shopping Mall Is Becoming a Media Platform
The shopping mall has spent years evolving beyond a collection of stores. Dining, entertainment, events and other experiences have increasingly turned major shopping centers into places designed to give consumers more reasons to visit and stay. Now that evolution is moving into advertising. Simon Property Group has launched Simon Media Network, a commerce media platform […]
Ace Hardware Makes Retail Media More Local
Ace Hardware is expanding its retail media network around weather, store proximity, customer intent, and local inventory. Ace’s approach is showing how physical context can give retailers an advantage that audience targeting alone cannot. Retail media networks have generally been built around first-party customer data and proximity to a transaction. Ace Hardware is adding the […]
When Falling Store Traffic Isn’t a Marketing Problem
Lululemon plans to increase marketing as sales weaken across stores and ecommerce. Its challenge is determining which parts of the customer journey need fixing before applying the same response across an 825-location network. Lululemon plans to increase its marketing investment as it attempts to reverse declining sales and weakening brand sentiment. But before spending more […]
Yext Pushes AI Visibility From Measurement to Action
AI visibility is creating a new scale problem for multi-location brands: individual locations need to remain accurate, active and relevant across more digital surfaces than ever. Yext’s latest expansion reflects a broader shift from monitoring AI discovery to actively managing it. Knowing whether a brand appears in ChatGPT, Gemini or other AI-driven discovery experiences is […]
DOOH Makes Its Case for More Digital Ad Dollars
Digital out-of-home advertising (DOOH) has spent years adding screens, data and programmatic buying capabilities. A series of recent developments suggests the next phase will be less about adding inventory and more about making that inventory easier to buy, measure and verify. Two announcements this week illustrate that shift. VIOOH has partnered with Screenverse to make […]
Samsung Turning Commercial Screens Into Ad Inventory
The digital screens already operating inside restaurants, retailers, hotels, gyms, and other commercial properties are increasingly becoming more than signage. They are becoming media inventory. Samsung Electronics America and Smartify Media are accelerating that transition through a partnership connecting Samsung commercial displays to Smartify’s digital out-of-home (DOOH) advertising network. Samsung VXT Ads, Powered by Smartify, […]
How CKE Is Scaling Local Marketing
CKE Restaurants is building a more centralized local marketing infrastructure across Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s while moving parts of its marketing closer to individual regions and locations. For multi-location brands, the strategy shows how automation can make enterprise scale and local relevance increasingly complementary. For a restaurant company operating thousands of locations, the local marketing […]
Scorpion Pushes MULO Advertising Earlier in the Journey
Scorpion is expanding its Google Ads offering with Demand Gen, giving multi-location brands another way to reach consumers before they actively search for a nearby service provider. Paid search has long been a cornerstone of local customer acquisition. A consumer searches for a nearby home-services provider, attorney, pest-control company, or other service, and brands compete […]
Independent Agencies Get a New Buying-Power Benchmark
Agency scale has traditionally been associated with greater media buying leverage. A new partnership between Guideline and Tinuiti is putting that independent agencies assumption to the test, using verified market intelligence to compare negotiated media costs against broader benchmarks. For brands evaluating media agencies, buying power has long been one of the arguments favoring the […]
Yelp Moves Local Discovery Closer to Conversion in ChatGPT
AI-powered local discovery is moving beyond the recommendation and closer to the transaction. Yelp’s expanded integration with ChatGPT brings new capabilities into the conversational experience, potentially shortening the path between discovering a location and becoming a customer. For multi-location brands, appearing in an AI recommendation is quickly becoming only part of the challenge. The next […]
SOCi Links Restaurant Growth to AI Visibility
Restaurant expansion and contraction are often explained by consumer demand, labor costs, menu innovation, or access to capital. New research from SOCi suggests another metric deserves attention: local AI visibility. Analyzing eight restaurant chains expanding in 2026 alongside eight brands reducing their footprints, SOCi found a consistent performance gap across every major local discovery channel. […]
Inside the Dutch Bros National Expansion Strategy
Opening more coffee shops may be the most visible part of the Dutch Bros growth strategy. Behind the scenes, however, the company is building something just as important: the marketing infrastructure needed to acquire customers more efficiently, personalize engagement, and increase customer lifetime value. As Dutch Bros expands nationally, that infrastructure may prove to be […]
Vevo Brings Premium Music Videos to MULO Brands
Vevo is bringing its premium music videos into brick-and-mortar businesses through a new partnership with Rockbot, giving MULO brands another way to create more engaging and consistent in-store experiences For multi-location brands, the in-store experience is becoming an increasingly important competitive differentiator. While digital channels continue to dominate customer acquisition, what happens inside a physical […]