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 […]
Thryv Adds Revenue Intelligence for Franchise Brands
For franchise brands, generating leads is no longer the primary challenge. The bigger opportunity is understanding why some locations consistently convert demand into revenue while others struggle despite receiving similar marketing support. That shift is reflected in Thryv’s latest integration with Breesy AI, which combines customer acquisition, engagement, and operational intelligence into a unified view […]
Customer Retention, Marketing’s Competitive Advantage
For much of the past decade, digital marketing has been dominated by customer acquisition. Brands invested heavily in paid search, social media, retail media, influencers, and performance advertising, all with the goal of finding the next customer more efficiently than their competitors. That equation is beginning to shift. As consumers discover brands through an expanding […]
Conversational Advertising Is Entering MULO Marketing
Conversational AI is rapidly becoming another place where consumers discover local businesses and the advertising infrastructure is beginning to follow. As brands prepare, the challenge is shifting from simply being recommended by AI to managing paid visibility at scale. For years, digital advertising for multi-location brands followed a familiar playbook. Consumers searched Google, clicked through […]
CTV Budgets Keep Growing, Trust Still Hasn’t Caught Up.
Connected TV has won the budget battle. Now it must win the credibility battle. As marketers demand stronger evidence of business impact, measurement, not inventory, is emerging as the industry’s next competitive battleground. New research from performance CTV platform JamLoop suggests the industry’s biggest obstacle is no longer adoption but trust. While half of marketers […]
Multi-Location Growth Is Becoming an Operating Platform
When reports surfaced that Inspire Brands had confidentially filed for an initial public offering, much of the attention focused on valuation, revenue, and the scale of a restaurant company operating more than 33,000 locations across Arby’s, Buffalo Wild Wings, Dunkin’, Jimmy John’s, SONIC Drive-In, and Baskin-Robbins. The more interesting story, however, is the collection of […]
Jersey Mike’s IPO Highlights the Power of Disciplined MULO Growth
Jersey Mike’s decision to file for an initial public offering comes at a time when restaurant operators face a difficult operating environment marked by cautious consumers, higher labor costs, and slowing industry growth. Yet the sandwich chain has continued to expand its footprint while improving profitability, positioning itself as one of the restaurant industry’s strongest […]
Kroger’s Giant Eagle Deal Signals the Next Battle in Retail Media
Less than two years after regulators blocked its proposed acquisition of Albertsons, Kroger is back in the acquisition market. This time, the company is taking a smaller and more targeted approach, announcing an agreement to acquire regional grocery chain Giant Eagle in a deal valued at approximately $1.65 billion. At first glance, the transaction appears […]
Walmart’s Vibe Acquisition Shows Its Advertising Ambitions
Walmart has spent the past several years quietly building one of the most formidable advertising businesses outside of the traditional digital giants. What began as a retail media effort designed to monetize shopper data is increasingly evolving into something much larger: a full-funnel advertising ecosystem capable of competing for budgets that have historically flowed to […]
As AI Changes Local Discovery, Scorpion Bets on Scale and Technology
The future of local marketing may depend less on generating leads and more on connecting marketing activity directly to business outcomes. The Scorpion acquisition of 1SEO reflects a growing industry shift toward AI-powered platforms that help businesses compete in an increasingly complex discovery environment. Artificial intelligence is rapidly changing how consumers discover, evaluate, and choose […]
Yext Wants to Be the Infrastructure Layer for Agentic Marketing
For most of the last decade, local marketing technology was built around helping brands rank in search engines. That model is beginning to change as AI-powered search experiences, agentic marketing, recommendation engines, and conversational assistants play a larger role in how consumers discover and evaluate businesses. According to Yext’s recent Consumer Search Behaviors report, 28% […]
Basis and Cint Want Brand Metrics to Matter Before Campaigns End
Digital advertising has long operated with two separate measurement systems. On one side sit performance metrics such as clicks, conversions, cost per acquisition (CPA), and return on ad spend (ROAS). These indicators provide near real-time visibility into campaign activity and allow marketers to optimize media while campaigns are running. On the other side are brand […]