Survey: Multi-Location Brands Warm to AI, See It as Most Useful for Email
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.
Facebook Takes a Stab at Local—Again
“As it stands, Facebook’s latest local effort is of academic interest but hardly seems a reason for businesses to actively re-engage with the free side of the social giant’s features. From a competitive viewpoint, it hardly seems the stuff of legend needed to take on the current local search hegemon, Google,” Mike Blumenthal tells David Mihm in their latest biweekly column.
Newly Launched Block Club Chicago (Out of DNAinfo) Goes a ‘Bit Old School’
Last November, discount-stock-brokerage billionaire Joe Ricketts summarily shut down his DNAinfo operations in the Windy City and New York. But in a fast-paced reinvention, the DNAinfo/Chicago team has Kickstarted its way back onto the streets and into the neighborhoods with the June launch of Block Club Chicago.
A Probing Look at Local News Comes to Some Disturbing Conclusions
To accurately gauge the quality of digital local news and assess its impact on communities, you would have to do what no one has wanted, or dared, to do. You would have to look at enough websites, enough stories and videos, in enough communities until you were glassy-eyed. Researchers behind a new study did just that.
Survey: Identifying Best Practices in Reputation and Review Management
Multi-location brands that use reputation and review management to manage local marketing and advertising are more likely to say that their marketing efforts are effective, according to Street Fight’s latest survey. Analysis of the survey identified several related strategies that correlated strongly with marketing effectiveness, including trying to respond to every review and working with a reputation specialist with its own technology.
As Local Search Enters the Voice Era, Three Content Channels Dominate
You’re well covered today on the three top voice platforms if you have strong listings on Google, Apple, and Yelp. If you want to do even more, make sure your Bing listings are up to date for Cortana (note that Yelp reviews show up here as well), and submit your listing info to Here and Foursquare in order to be found in Samsung’s Bixby interface.
Local News Publishers Still Mired in Ad Fraud, New Pixalate Data Shows
According to new research from Pixalate, a cross-channel fraud intelligence company that works with brands and platforms to prevent ad fraud and improve ad inventory quality, about a quarter of all smartphone app video and smartphone app display activity is “invalid traffic” (the technical term for what is largely fraud).
Will Apple Help Assemble the ‘Internet of Places’?
The AR cloud is the missing piece in the vision we all have for how AR should work. It’s the spatial map of the world that will let AR devices understand their surroundings. Taking this into account, the news that Apple is collecting its own data for Apple Maps may have implications for AR.
Location Targeting is Nothing Without the Facts to Back it Up
Doing location targeting right is no simple matter, and common claims about it require further scrutiny. Accuracy of a location through parcel targeting, a rapid refresh audience strategy, and reaching the right people at scale through IP and cross-device targeting will make a major difference in location-based campaign outcomes.
Survey: Multi-Location Brands Continue to Shift Digital Budgets to Local
Many multi-location brands still find some traditional media more effective than most digital tactics and focus their digital efforts on the corporate e-commerce site or company branding. But an aggressive group of budget shifters are increasing spending across a variety of digital advertising and marketing vehicles, often with a local focus.
Who Will Own Your Augmented Reality?
Questions about AR ownership will be particularly contentious wherever money is changing hands, such as in AR advertising. Courts will face questions such as ownership of digital ad inventory when there are AR overlays on private property (or on other ads). There could be similar gray area in retail & commerce.