The Voice Revolution: New Wave of Call Assistants
There’s a quiet revolution underway in the world of business communication—one that I find impossible to ignore. The humble phone call: an interaction so often overlooked or underappreciated, has become a hotbed for innovation. At the center of this shift? Voice agents and call assistants, tech that’s quickly moving from novelty to necessity. We need […]
Locality Launches Audience Engine
Has Locality re-engineered the foundation of local advertising to deliver performance, precision, and transparency, at scale, for advertisers? That is certainly the objective of the local video solutions provider, which launched its Locality Audience Engine in collaboration with Lovelytics, Newton Research, and Databricks. Locality and its strategic partners seek to engage local audiences by integrating […]
Buckle Up for the OOH Ad Gravy Train
Starting next year, the United States will be the center of am OOH sports bonanza. In 2026, the annual Super Bowl game kicks off in February. Then, FIFA World Cup matches will be played in 11 locations. And last but not least, the Summer Olympics returns to Los Angeles in 2028. DOOH advertisers and platforms are […]
Genius Sports Limited’s New-Found Audience Granularity
Who are your fans? More specifically, who is your fan? Genius Sports Limited’s recent acquisition of Sports Innovation Lab, promises to make both scale and granularity possible when building an audience. Sports Innovation Lab is a data, analytics, and insights leader. Its research on fan behavior through its Fluid Fan™ Graph has helped global brands, […]
In-Game Ads Play the Long Game
Just because someone is an avid gamer doesn’t make them impervious to DOOH advertising. In fact, it’s a great channel in which to reach them via geotargeting and complements the in-game advertising experience across devices. As always, DOOH is non-intrusive. So why does only 5% of ad spend target the immersive, highly focused user platform […]
MULO Brands With Soul Fall Pick: Neighborly
What’s soulful about having a toilet unclogged or dust bunnies removed from under your bed? Neighborly, the fastest-growing home services company (with 19 brands in North America and $4B+ in revenue) prides itself on offering services along with soul throughout their business, building out a culture of caring and community. In fact, their recent convention was […]
Keen and Accretive: OOH Drives Hidden Growth
In a media landscape dominated by search, social, and streaming, a new analysis from Keen Decision Systems and Accretive suggests marketers may be missing one of their most efficient levers for growth: out-of-home (OOH) advertising. The joint study reveals that OOH delivers a marginal ROI (mROI) of $7.58 … well above the average media mROI […]
Andy Wiederhorn Returns to Fat Brands
Sometimes stepping away from a role for a while gives leaders a whole new perspective on their company and its future. Andy Wiederhorn, CEO of Fat Brands, spent more than a year as an outside consultant and strategic advisor to the company. It allowed him an opportunity to focus on long-term strategy and capital allocation. […]
Spectrio and Screenverse Partner to Monetize Brand-Owned Screens
Spectrio announced a strategic partnership with Screenverse, one of the fastest-growing players in the programmatic digital out-of-home (DOOH) space. The collaboration, announced October 15, 2025, expands Spectrio’s capabilities by introducing programmatic ad monetization directly into its enterprise signage ecosystem, turning brand-owned screens into scalable media opportunities. For Spectrio, a long-time leader in digital signage and […]
Has the SWAS (Store-Within-A-Store) Model Hit the Brand Wall?
Retail brand partnerships are nothing new. Big-box retailers seeking new ways to drive traffic were drawn to the SWAS (store-within-a-store) model. In other words, retail brands that had their brick-and-mortar stores set up “outposts” in other well-known stores to bring new consumers through the doors and boost sales of the co-located brand, without the full […]
Translation Needs the Right Turn of Phrase
Phrase is a language technology platform that combines advanced AI translation tools, workflow automation, and creative collaboration within a single environment built to answer the need for any and all global content needs across a business. Phrase has released a new wave of product innovations across global markets. Capabilities like Auto Adapt, Phrase Studio, the […]
MULO Dozen: Fall Brands in Review
Never a dull moment in the MULO (multi-location) brand ecosystem! And this fall has been no exception. From leadership changes to tech innovations, the retail, restaurant, service, and hospitality worlds are ever-changing! Private equity ownership of MULO brands is nothing new. As revealed in a recent press release, Freddy’s Frozen Custard & Steakburgers has been […]
Halloween 2025 Begins and Results are Not Scary
“Summerween” is a term explored by Retail Next. You’ve probably noticed that Halloween pumpkins rapidly replaced flip-flops as early as July. It’s no wonder. The holiday results in as much as $12B in annual spending, and retailers are looking to get their share of the sales treat bag. A recent study (reported in that RetailNext […]
StreetFight LIVE’25: 12 Trends & Disruptive Ideas To Watch
Street Fight LIVE 2025 attracted the best and the brightest thought leaders from across the MULO (multi-location) ecosystem. We deliberately curated and invited a select, diverse group of dynamic senior executives from retail, restaurant, service, agency, and technology businesses to share their perspectives on the future trends and disruptive ideas for MULO brands in an […]
Survey: Voters Feel ‘Worse Off’ Compared to Early 2025
President Donald Trump has a personality problem, according to the latest Voters Trend Report from Resonate, a technology company combines big data and psychographic survey studies to develop an understanding of consumer motivations. Survey responses found that half of respondents expressed dissatisfaction with his personal behavior. Only 13% are satisfied, leaving more than a third […]
Amperity Gets Personal with Seahawks’ Fans
The Seattle Seahawks are celebrating their 50th anniversary. A lot has changed in marketing over those years, with sophisticated systems that can reach fans at various touchpoints in their ticket-buying journey. Amperity, a customer-data platform, is enabling the Seahawks’ back-office to unify fan information from ticketing, retail, digital, and other systems to create a single, accurate […]
BOOM: First Watch is a Brand to Watch
Founded in 1983, First Watch has quietly and steadily expanded to approximately 500 locations across 29 states. The success is, in part, attributable to the ever-growing popularity of breakfast as a restaurant category. Although the brand still lags behind one of its oldest (1969) and most formidable (600+ stores in 49 states) competitor Cracker Barrel, […]
BOOM: From C-Store to Travel Center with Wawa
We can all agree that the c-store (convenience store) is evolving rapidly and has even become a testing ground for a fantastic array of new technologies. After all, it makes sense. How many other retail businesses are so focused on finding the consumer precisely at their time of need…whether it’s a bathroom break, gas or a […]
Matt Lopez: The Human Behind the Robots
Leading up to Street Fight LIVE 2025, we have been getting up close and personal with some of our speakers, encouraging them to share stories of how they found themselves in the MULO (multi-location) ecosystem. How will one of our speakers, Pepper, get to Microsoft’s headquarters? Not via Uber. But he does have a human guide […]
Study: OOH Ignites Sports Fans
Sports fans respond enthusiastically to humor, especially when they are reached with an OOH message inside the venue of an event. That’s according to a new report from the OAAA in conjunction with The Harris Poll, which found that those same fans tend to spend locally. According to the findings, sports fans act on OOH […]