Veteran Reporter Makes Journalism Bloom in ‘News Desert’ of Luther, Okla.
In this Q&A, longtime journalist and communications specialist Dawn Shelton talks about how she started the Luther Register News, what she has in mind for news deserts in nearby towns, and how the Pecan Festival may represent an important part of the financial future of her new independent journalistic publishing enterprise.
Will AR Bring Together the Best of Online and Offline Shopping?
Mike Boland: We know about the advantages of e-commerce. There’s more supply, transparency, cost efficiency, inventory (a.k.a “endless aisle”), and the ability to dynamically search and filter product attributes. AR can engender a sort of hybrid UX that brings these features to store aisles. The losers in the next era of retail will be those who try to fight this experiential innovation.
LBMA Podcast: Amazon’s Search Re-Targeting, Target’s Use of Runerra
Listen to This Week in Location Based Marketing, a weekly video podcast from the Location Based Marketing Association with Asif Khan & Aubriana Lopez. On the show: Amazon’s search re-targeting, Target using Runerra, Intraposition raises $1.5M, Buick integrates Yelp, Walmart goes with maps and faster checkout, Macy’s invests in VR roll-out.
How Content Partnerships Have Made Yelp a Data Amplifier
Damian Rollison: It became clear to me, during Yelp’s presentation at the recent Brandify Summit, that the company has become a data amplifier. Here I’m making use of Gib Olander’s helpful term for companies whose data finds its way into a multitude of consumer-facing channels. In this column, I break down the significance of that state of affairs for hyperlocal marketing.
Don’t Panic: Location-Powered Mobile Marketing is (Still) the Future of Advertising
Why all the recent talk of going data-only when data shows that customers are amenable to providing location data if it leads to relevant advertising? Let’s take a closer look at what a long-term commitment to our media partners really requires when it comes to location, minus all the triopoly panic.
LION Loses Director DeRienzo to Hearst, but ‘Indie’ Summit Doesn’t Miss a Beat
To find out what the Summit of Local Independent Online News Publishers accomplished, I went to longtime journalist Steve Beatty, who was editor and CEO of the award-winning, investigative website The Lens in New Orleans for eight years before joining LION as a consultant last January and who, with DeRienzo’s departure, has been named interim director.
Google and the On-SERP Experience: We’re Just Gettin’ Warmed Up
The introduction of a new Knowledge Graph layer in the form of “Topics” indicates to me that Google’s latest efforts in this arena will extend in two directions beyond Local entities. I see these linkages extending all the way up the search journey to initial consideration and even further down the funnel beyond Local entities.
How AI Can Help CPGs Meet Millennial and Gen-Z Expectations
Last year, almost half of Amazon’s private-label sales were in consumer-packaged goods. Pre-Amazon, legacy CPGs once would’ve been the beneficiary of that demand. CPGs have struggled to evolve with younger consumer preferences. Here’s what I mean, along with ways AI can help them improve.




















Google’s Backdoor Shift to a Social Network
Mike Blumenthal and David Mihm: In the case of Q&A, reviews, and the coming sports commenting feature, Google is looking to gain a better understanding of the entity, and in the case of the sharing buttons and the new ability to follow a business, Google is looking to better understand the individual so that it can improve the search experience now and in the future. That would be a very Googly social network.