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More Brands Are Going DTC. Here’s Why

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Yeti’s recent decision to no longer sell its products at Lowe’s and transition to a direct-to-consumer model is not an anomaly. A growing number of traditional brands are moving away from wholesale and opting to sell to consumers directly through their own e-commerce channels.

The Growth of Visual Search

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Claire Carlile, in a recent post on visual search that contains useful tips for local businesses, shows us that Google is now making it possible to conduct a search that starts and ends with images. Her example search is conducted using Google Lens, where an image of a Sony headphones package is the “query” that produces a local pack result replete with its own images. This may or may not be the future of search, but it’s highly representative of the visual-first orientation that Google is embracing to a growing degree.

Report: Online Shopping Experiences Disrupted by Last-Mile Delivery Delays

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Online grocery sales reached nearly $98 billion in the U.S. last year. Restaurants and home essentials sellers also saw incredible growth. While demand for the local delivery of goods purchased online continues to skyrocket, a new report finds that persistent delivery disruptions in the last mile threaten to impact customer retention and blunt long-term industry growth.

Unstructured Data Becomes an Untapped Opportunity for Brands

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Unstructured data now represents 80% to 90% of all new enterprise data, according to Gartner, but just 18% of organizations are taking advantage. Unstructured data, like product images, customer audio files, and comments from social media, represents an untapped opportunity for marketers.

How Brands Can Adjust Marketing to Reassure Customers amid Inflation

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J. Walker Smith, Chief Knowledge Officer, North America, at the data analytics and brand consulting company Kantar, checked in with Street Fight to share original research on customer attitudes toward inflation and discuss how marketers can shift practices to best address this challenge.

Snap Scales Up its Geo-Local AR Ambitions

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Snap’s AR lens playbook started with a handful of in-house lenses like rainbow vomit and dog ears, before opening up the Lens Studio platform to creators everywhere. And it seems to be working, given that Snap now gets 6 billion daily lens plays. Could geo-local AR be next?

Long Pandemic and Local Commerce: Expert Roundup

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Street Fight’s core focus is localized commerce and marketing: how brick-and-mortar businesses use technology to connect with customers. This month, we’re covering the continued impact of the pandemic on that space. To that end, three martech and retail tech leaders from VDX.tv, CatapultX, and VAI expound on the pandemic and local commerce in this expert roundup.

QR Code

How QR Codes Are Advancing Adtech

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QR codes’ influence on adtech will not end with Coinbase’s Super Bowl campaign. I checked in with Frank Maguire, VP of insights and strategy at programmatic adtech company Sharethrough, to discuss the benefits and future of QR codes in adtech.

Simpli.fi’s Political Ad Tool Mixes Data Sets for Improved Match Rates

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While politicians and PACs compete for contributions, agencies are working behind the scenes to help their clients’ ad dollars go further. A political advertising tool recently unveiled by Simpli.fi claims to do just that, mixing address lists from data providers and first-party databases to increase match rates.

How IDFA Deprecation is Driving Multi-Channel Marketing

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What can brands do to understand, reach, and connect with consumers as they look towards a future beyond device-based identifiers?

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Why Rising Prices Are Changing the Way We Shop

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Rising inflation rates and supply chain shortages are causing more consumers to hold off on making big purchases in 2022 — and that’s giving retailers reason for concern.

New Hires at Lotame, LiveRamp, DemandScience, TextNow, and GumGum

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This Street Fight roundup features new hires in the spaces Street Fight covers: adtech, martech, e-commerce, localized marketing, location intelligence, and more. This month’s roundup features new hires at Lotame, LiveRamp, DemandScience, TextNow, and GumGum.

Why Yelp’s Local Data Keeps Popping Up in Unexpected Places

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Since the debut of Yelp Fusion in 2016, thousands of platforms and experiences have added Yelp search and local content. Integration partners can choose which attributes to show on their platforms, with millions of business updates coming in each month.

Smaller Brands Are Struggling with Social Commerce. Here’s Why

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Social commerce is expected to grow 3x as fast as traditional e-commerce, according to a report by Accenture, to reach $1.2 trillion by 2025, but that doesn’t mean savvy marketers from smaller brands can’t find their own points of entry. By thinking outside the box and looking beyond Instagram and TikTok for attention, some midsize brands are finding opportunities to shine.

Retailers Scramble to Implement AI-Based Pricing Strategies

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Supply shortages are easing, but inflation is showing no sign of slowing down. Retailers are using AI to refine their pricing strategies.

In Crowded Space, Brands Rethink Approach to CTV

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Research from eMarketer shows that advertisers spent $10.3 billion on connected TV programmatic display ads in 2021, an 82% increase from the year prior. But what they got in return is anyone’s guess. For all the advancements in digital marketing, CTV advertising still remains an opaque space where advertisers know little about the shows or other ads their spots are running against. This can lead to wasted budgets, ad frequency issues, and even fraud.

Adriel Raises $13 Million Series B to Power Multi-Channel Marketing

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The all-in-one digital marketing platform Adriel announced this morning that it had raised $13 million in Series B funding to scale its platform into an “end-to-end ad operations system.” Shinhan Venture Investment led the round, which followed a 2019 Series A worth $4 million.

US E-Commerce Brands Need to Localize to Maximize Overseas Opportunities

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International ecommerce sales are skyrocketing, but selling abroad means taking on the challenge of catering to consumers with localized preferences. A recent global ecommerce report by payments infrastructure provider PPRO shows many brands are not currently up to the task.

5 Next-Gen RFID Solutions for Omnichannel Retailers

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Radio-frequency identification, or RFID, has found new life in the post-pandemic retail space. By attaching small strips of metal that can transmit radio waves with information about any product, retailers are finding that they can accelerate and automate the store checkout process. Unlike barcodes, which must be scanned individually, RFID tags can be scanned together and they hold significantly more information.

Marketers Struggle to Balance Personalization and Privacy

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While consumers are increasingly coming to expect personalization in their inboxes, too much personalization can damage trust and steer customers away. Nobody wants to feel like they’re being watched, but recent surveys show consumers are also growing increasingly frustrated with marketing materials that aren’t targeted enough.