6 Cannabis Point-of-Sale Systems Blazing Trails for Nascent Retail Sector

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Unlike traditional POS solutions, or even mobile systems like Square, cannabis point-of-sale systems are designed in a way that helps dispensaries operate under the appropriate guidelines, particularly when it comes to processing cash and managing inventory. Here are six cannabis point-of-sale systems that dispensaries are using right now.

New Hires at Womply and Urban Airship

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Every two weeks, our jobs columnist Geoff Michener provides a roundup of the latest hires in the digital marketing and media ecosystems. This week’s edition also includes new hires at Acceleration Partners and Outbrain.

The Location Angle on Another Bombshell Privacy Exposé from the New York Times

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What exactly did Facebook do wrong, and what do its supposed wrongs portend for the future of data-driven, and especially location data-driven, marketing? Here are some major takeaways pertaining to future legislation, likely consumer reactions, and the distinction between data selling and sharing.

Google Testing Restaurant Booking, Foreshadowing Ever Tighter Grip on Local Commerce

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The news is an important signal that local-commerce options like Reserve with Google will get sleeker and more dominant in the years to come. And it calls to mind a crucial local-search debate: Will Google SERPs and the many options for engagement with local brick-and-mortars on them effectively supplant the local business website as the crucial interface for interacting with customers?

Cannabis Retailer Uses Tech to Boost Employee Morale

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Old-school companies hosted picnics and holiday parties to keep their employees happy, but tech-focused startups in the cannabis industry are taking a decidedly more sophisticated approach.

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6 Lead-Generation Platforms for Local Businesses

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More than a quarter of consumers say they use the internet to find local businesses every day, and yet a whopping 29% of small businesses still don’t have websites. Here are six examples of lead-generation platforms that small businesses are using right now.

GMB App Adds Support for Service-Area Businesses

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As of late last week, Google is offering an update to the Google My Business app that adds support for service-area businesses. Earlier in November, a Local Search Forum blog post indicated that Google would be adding features to help such businesses with local customers.

Starbucks Partners with Uber to Launch On-Demand Delivery at 2,000 Locations

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Starbucks announced on Friday that it’s partnering with Uber to launch on-demand delivery at 2,000 locations. The partnership is a sign of the “near me” local search era for retail, one in which proximity and convenience have become paramount, outweighing even loyalty.

Efficacy of Google Posts Drops Following Relegation to Bottom of Knowledge Panel

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Following a seemingly arbitrary choice on Google’s part to move Posts to the bottom of the Knowledge Panel, their efficacy in boosting businesses’ local search presence seems to be dropping.

Retail as a Service: Amazon will Create (and Destroy) with Cashierless Checkout Solution

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Mike Boland: The innovation including and surrounding cashierless checkout goes beyond payments to affect a broader set of functions like supply chain, inventory management, and store layouts. It’s like a retail toolkit in a box, with cash-flow friendly pricing, à la SaaS. You may have heard of it: It’s called retail as a service (RaaS), and it could transform the next decade of retail. Amazon will lead the way.

Digital Ad Trends to Watch in 2019, Mobile to Account for 71% of Digital Ad Spend

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Programmatic SSP Pubmatic released on Tuesday morning an elaborate report detailing digital ad trends to watch in 2019. The highlights include a look into how mobile, video, and of course programmatic itself will continue to evolve in the coming year, reshaping the way brands reach customers.

Location Data Industry Gets Huge Wake-Up Call on Monday

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Platforms, brands, and vendors benefiting from the reams of location data used to hit consumers with highly targeted ads should be paying attention to a change suggested by Google and Facebook’s appearances before government authorities, a New York Times exposé out Monday, and most importantly the impending arrival of GDPR-like legislation in the United States: 2019 will be the year privacy actually matters, posing a potentially devastating threat to the status quo of the location-based data and marketing industries.

How to Better Connect with Consumers via Mobile Coupons

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Dan Slavin: It’s not just smartphone use that is growing—the number of people totally dependent on these devices to access the internet is rising as well. Both segments are projected to continue to show strong growth. Yet some marketers and retailers are struggling with attracting these users with offers and coupons.

Consumers’ Reliance on Online Reviews, Evolving Rapidly, Is Reshaping Local Search

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Recommendations gradually exchanged in person are now flooding webpages, most notably Google’s SERPs. Twenty-seven percent of consumers are now reading reviews of local businesses every day, marking a staggering jump from just 12% in 2017, according to a recent report.

Firefly, Mounting Ad Displays to Ubers, Comes Out of Stealth with $21.5M

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Firefly, a new digital ad company, hopes to provide Uber drivers with another way to make money as they drive. The startup has quietly assembled a fleet of close to 1,000 Uber drivers in San Francisco and Los Angeles who have been mounting ad displays to the top of their vehicles.

RhythmOne Introduces Linear TV Attribution Partnership with Placed

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Marketing technology end-to-end platform RhythmOne announced an expansion of its relationship with attribution solution Placed this week, incorporating linear tv measurements into their already existing partnership.

Google Local Services Reportedly Expand to Canada, Signaling Rapid Growth

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Launch in 2015 in Silicon Valley’s home court, Local Service Ads have since expanded to a whopping 90 markets in the U.S. and are now making their way abroad, where searches for local services are abundant.

The Numbers on Mobile’s Role in Holiday Shopping This Season

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The results of a survey released just last week by mobile ad firm AdColony go beyond the already stale proclamation that the mobile revolution has taken over retail, pointing instead to granular details about just how consumers are using mobile today. We provide the highlights.

Google Reviews Hit with Massive Spam Attempt

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Google reviews, increasingly essential to the online search presence of brand and SMB brick-and-mortars alike, were hit by a massive spam attempt last week. At least 2 million fraudulent reviews were posted, according to ReviewFraud.org.

Kroger Pushes Boundaries with Mobile Holiday Strategies

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Feeling the pinch from online-only grocers, many brick-and-mortar supermarkets are beginning to dip their toes into mobile marketing this holiday season. Kroger, on the other hand, is jumping all the way in.