Brands See Risk and Reward When Automating Reputation Management
With the reviews and other content being posted online about brands coming from an increasingly wide swath of sources, manual techniques for reputation management are no longer viable on a large scale. At the same time, the volume of online opinions bombarding potential customers is making it more important than ever for brands to constantly monitor what’s being said about them online. How are brands coping with the challenge?
Freckle IoT Announces Attribution Backed by Fully Compliant First-Party Data
With privacy top of mind for marketers, offline measurement firm Freckle IoT is hitting the market this morning with an expanded attribution product backed by just about the most compliant consumer data on the market. Its compliance is secure because it comes from Killi, a consent management company also founded and headed up by Freckle Founder and CEO Neil Sweeney.
Urban Airship Rebrands as Airship, Offers Broad Suite of Mobile Customer Engagement Solutions
In a bid to expand its solutions well beyond push notifications, marketing firm Urban Airship is dropping the qualifier Urban from its name and launching a new identity as Airship, a customer engagement company that works with brands to target and coordinate customer interactions across apps, websites, SMS, email, mobile wallets, and other emerging channels.
Destination-Based Marketing Adapts Location-Driven Strategies for Consumers on the Move
Brand marketers have been tailoring content to consumers based on their real-time, physical locations for years. It’s called location-based marketing, and if you’re a regular reader of Street Fight, you’ve probably heard the term quite a bit. But what happens when consumers are on the move, either driving or walking to their actual destinations? How effective is location-based marketing under those conditions?
The team at Waze believes it has created the solution for which marketers are looking, and it’s calling that solution destination-based marketing.
Years After YouTube-Driven Brand Safety Crisis, Consumer Concerns Remain
A whopping 60% of consumers surveyed by mobile ad tech firm AdColony say they still see content on Facebook that is damaging to brands, and 49% say seeing appropriate advertisements in proximity to harmful content negatively affects their perception of proper advertisers. That’s the most provocative finding from a survey that indicates the brand safety issue is far from resolved in the digital advertising ecosystem.
Measuring the Impact of McDonald’s Push Into Automation, Personalization
With the right personalization and automation technology in place, McDonald’s is said to have plans to learn about customers through their ordering behaviors. More specifically, McDonald’s is planning to use Dynamic Yield’s technology to create a drive-thru menu that can be tailored based on factors like weather, restaurant traffic, and trending menu items. For example, when the temperature tops 100 degrees, milkshakes and ice cream sundaes might move into a prominent spot on the drive-thru menu board. When it starts raining outside, coffee and hot chocolate might take top billing.
6 Customer Data Platforms for Brands
Customer data platforms dominated the conversation at the MarTech Conference in California earlier this month, as marketers shared how they’ve been able to pull data from multiple sources, combine that data into single customer profiles, and then make that data available to other marketing systems.
With so much hype surrounding customer data platforms right now, we decided to dig into the market and learn about some of the hottest players in the space. Here’s what we found.
Voice-Readiness Study Indicates Vast Majority of Businesses Fail Basic Listings Test
It only takes listing correct and comprehensive information on Google, Yelp, and Bing for a brand or small business to earn 90% on location management solution Uberall’s voice search readiness test. Yet only 4% of the businesses in the company’s latest study, which examined the voice preparedness of 75,000 listings, had correct info on all three of those major directories.
Government Regulation Is Marketers’ Most Common Concern About Data-Driven Initiatives
Changing political headwinds and increased media attention on data collection and privacy are apparently rattling marketers, who named government regulation as an obstacle to data-driven campaigns more than any other single factor. That’s per a survey of U.S. marketers by Winterberry Group and the Interactive Advertising Bureau, eMarketer reported.
Another Day, Another Story About Exposed Facebook User Data
While we don’t yet know if any nefarious activity took place as a result of this latest news of Facebook user information’s exposure to third parties, the bottom line, as per the pithy genie line above, is that Facebook handled user data so recklessly for so long that there’s no guarantee the company can prevent exposure going forward. That means, potential regulations for which Mark Zuckerberg is now calling notwithstanding, the end of the Facebook privacy-breach saga is likely not in sight.
Walmart Enlists Google to Power Voice-Driven Grocery Shopping
Partnerships between retailers and tech platforms will provide increasingly important benefits for local discovery as voice becomes a more established search channel. In the age of voice-driven local search, consumers looking for products and services will become accustomed to having only one option surfaced (as Assistant is unlikely to rattle off five choices), which means being a consumer’s first option will be paramount for brick-and-mortars.
Interactive Advertising Bureau Europe Catches Heat from Privacy Advocates
Johnny Ryan, chief policy and industry officer at Brave, a privacy-first web browser, filed a complaint with the Irish Data Commission against Interactive Advertising Bureau Europe on Tuesday evening based on the latter’s alleged violation of GDPR. A statement circulated by Brave on Tuesday identified IAB Europe as a leading lobbyist for the digital tracking industry and accused the company of violating GDPR guidelines with its “cookie wall,” a message encountered by those navigating to its website that requires visitors to consent to tracking from both IAB Europe and third parties.
Report: Education of SMB Marketers a Glaring Hole in Vendor Approaches
The disconnect between how vendors think they are supporting and educating their clients, and how those clients actually feel they are being supported, can be alarming. BrandMuscle’s report found that local marketers are hungry for marketing knowledge, and yet 18% believe they get “little to no support” from the agencies or marketing teams with which they work. Twenty-eight percent say they get “check-the-box support,” which is still insufficient.
Toast Raises $250M, Securing Lead Position in Restaurant Management Software
Restaurant management software provider Toast announced $250 million in additional funding on Monday, valuing the firm at $2.7 billion and cementing its lead position in the SaaS market for restaurants. TCV and Tiger Global Management led the Series E round.
Within 24 Hours, Further Signs That HUD’s Facebook Probe Could Upend Digital Ad Industry
What’s at stake in the Facebook housing discrimination probe and related investigations into Google and Twitter is whether the dissemination of online content—the news, product recommendations, advertising campaigns of all kinds, and entertainment—can and should be permitted on the basis of data collected on users’ personal characteristics and past behaviors. Should organizations, in industries as varied as entertainment, apparel, tech, and education, be permitted to use evolving technology to predict whom ads should target and thus who should see the content promoting Berkeley’s MBA program, the new housing development in Long Island City, or the hip sunglasses Warby Parker will never get me to buy? How does past human behavior and long-term inequality in various groups’ access to privileged resources shape ad targeting and the technology that automates it, and can the tech industry reach beyond those limitations to open up new futures instead of capitalizing on and reinforcing historical distinctions?
The news this week of the Trump administration’s first charges filed against a major tech company is the first step on our path to finding out.
Automated Ad Targeting Ensnares Facebook in a Discrimination Lawsuit
The lawsuit is big news not just for Facebook or for housing-related ads but for the digital advertising industry as a whole. That’s because it marks the first major federal attempt to use the resources of the law to curb ad targeting on the basis of racial discrimination. As interest in regulating broad tech spreads across the country and political spectrum, the lawsuit could prove a harbinger of harsher laws to come.
3 CRO Techniques That Actually Convert Visitors
The web is filled to the brim with quick conversion rate optimization tips. These include changing the color of your CTAs, making headlines catchier, and changing the background image of your landing page, among many others. While these strategies have shown results, there are a few effective CRO techniques that are often overlooked. In this article, I discuss less common CRO techniques that have the potential to drive significant results.
Mobile Video Struggles Persist While Tolerance for Them Decreases
It looks like the quality mobile content experts say we can expect from 5G will be much appreciated by consumers. Mobile video is more popular than ever, among both consumers and digital advertisers, but the medium is plagued by slow load times and suboptimal ads. That’s per a new report out from mobile video vendor Panthera.
6 Pure-Play Online-to-Offline Attribution Platforms
In a pure-play model, vendors focus exclusively on a certain number of core competencies. Not only does this help those companies to differentiate themselves from firms with broader offerings, but it also gives brands confidence that the vendor is an expert in the market. As online-to-offline attribution takes off, pure-play vendors are taking the lead in innovation, finding new ways to connect digital campaigns to foot traffic and in-store sales. Here are six vendors making a difference in the space right now.
5 Self-Serve Online-to-Offline Attribution Platforms
Marketers with limited budgets are turning to a bevy of self-serve online-to-offline attribution solutions to correlate visitation rates and purchase data with digital campaigns. Utilizing a variety of testing methods for mapping campaign performance and purchases, these platforms are giving marketers the answers they need to justify online ad spend. Here are five examples of online-to-offline attribution platforms that marketers are using right now.