News and Analysis

SPB Now Stands for "Serve People Better" Street Fight

SPB Now Stands for “Serve People Better”

Everyone loves a holiday miracle story!  And that may be the turnaround of SPB, which took over a wide range of struggling brands. The abbreviation stood for “Steak, Pizza, and Beer,” but Josh Kern, the CEO, is now committed to changing its meaning to “Serve People Better.” That’s what he aspires to do with the […]

GumGum’s Grimace: The Ads that Stole Christmas Street Fight

GumGum’s Grimace: The Ads that Stole Christmas

Forget privacy issues. Re-targeted ads are in cahoots with the Grinch, stealing the joy of surprise from Christmas. Nobody can be blamed when opening up a gift and thinking, “Now where have I seen that before? Oh yes, ads for it were sprayed across all my social-media accounts and everywhere I went on the Web.” […]

BUST: The Party is Over for Party City Street Fight

BUST: The Party is Over for Party City

Although we’d love to keep things festive and bright this holiday season and report just on future trends and greatest hits of 2024, the sad reality is that some retailers can’t keep the lights on.  According to CNN, Party City is the latest retailer to announce that it is closing all its stores and going […]

Commentary

Debunking 5 OOH Advertising Myths

A 2022 report based on a survey of more than 100 advertisers in the U.S. highlighted the top five misconceptions facing advertisers considering OOH. Fortunately, each of these myths is ripe for rebutting with statistics that support the facts.  

5 Digital Asset Management Tools for Multi-Location Brands

For multi-location brands with hundreds of store locations controlled by individual managers, digital asset management is about reducing risk.

Combating Affiliate Fraud with Qualified Traffic

Even though fraud is possible, a well-run affiliate program is far less likely to lose money due to fraud, thanks to checks and balances that detect anomalies.

Latest Posts

4 Ways Brand Marketers Should Harness ChatGPT — Or Risk Being Left Behind

4 Ways Brand Marketers Should Harness ChatGPT — Or Risk Being Left Behind

Generative AI has taken the world of marketing, advertising, and technology by storm. In industries where speed and accuracy are essential, brand marketers are finding creative ways to use tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard to interact with consumers in conversational dialogue and personalize messaging at scale.  According to a recent survey by Chief […]

How Retailers Can Improve Inventory Management in Real Time

How Retailers Can Improve Inventory Management in Real Time

Among other things, SymphonyAI is a SaaS company that enables retailers and convenience stores to see through the eyes of the customer regarding in-store products on shelves and improve inventory management. Using image capture from employee mobile devices, whether mobile phones, tablets, shelf cameras, ceiling cameras, or robots, both retailers and CPG companies use SymphonyAI’s […]

BUST: Walk-In Weight Loss Jenny Craig Trims Down (and Disappears?)

BUST: Walk-In Weight Loss Jenny Craig Trims Down (and Disappears?)

Jenny Craig once had more than 600 locations and nearly $500M in revenue. But, like many industries, digital communications have been part of its downfall. The company announced this week that, after 40 years,  they are shuttering all their locations. What are the factors that precipitated the massive change? New solutions for weight loss are […]

Data Waste Is Putting Retail Loyalty at Risk — Here’s Why

Data Waste Is Putting Retail Loyalty at Risk — Here’s Why

Retail marketers are grappling with plenty of challenges in 2023. Data waste isn’t one of them. For most marketers, data wastage is at the bottom of the list in terms of global importance, far below issues like evolving privacy regulations and the looming death of third-party cookies. Treasure Data’s Zack Wenthe thinks that’s a mistake. […]

Consumers Continue to Spend with Department Store Brands

When Commerce Signals, a TransUnion company that provides credit and debit card insights for retail, restaurants, and entertainment, discovered that department store brands TJ Maxx, Kohls, Nordstrom, and Bergdorf Goodman took market share from the likes of Macy’s, Neiman Marcus, and Saks, Nick Mangiapane was not surprised. “That’s exactly the kind of question that Commerce […]

With Google Cloud's BigQuery , Habu Makes Data Collaboration Safer

With Google Cloud’s BigQuery , Habu Makes Data Collaboration Safer

By all indications, data clean rooms have gone mainstream. Eighty percent of advertisers that spend more than $1 billion annually on media are expected to use data clean rooms this year, according to IAB, but interoperability and high costs are still proving to be a challenge, and no single developer of data clean room software […]

Airship Uses OpenAI to Enables Localized Content in Different Languages

Airship Uses OpenAI to Enable Localized Content in Different Languages

App-customer retention rates just got a little easier to achieve if one tech company has its way. Airship, which puts the user experience at the center of the branded-app ecosystem and has powered trillions of mobile app interactions for thousands of global brands, has made some upgrades to its own technology. For the first time […]

The Very Public Demise of Bed Bath & Beyond

BUST: The Very Public Demise of Bed Bath & Beyond

Who will remember the brand Bed Bath & Beyond in a few years, and what will they say? Only time will tell, but in the interim, the retail media has had no fodder shortage over the past few weeks, dissecting how and why this iconic multi-location brand declined and ultimately declared bankruptcy. Monday morning quarterbacks […]

Connected TV Ad Measurement Tools That Link Data to Identity

Connected TV advertising has become increasingly popular in recent years, as more people cut the cord and turn to streaming services for all-things entertainment. However, measuring the effectiveness of CTV ads and attributing their impact to business outcomes has continued to challenge agencies and advertisers.  Advertising with CTV and streaming increased 57% in 2021, to […]

KNIME Helps Improve Margins, Effectiveness for Brands

KNIME Helps Improve Margins, Effectiveness for Brands

Retail and CPG leaders strategically use data to drive profitability. KNIME, an open-source data analytics platform, has helped numerous retailers to forecast inventory and stock requirements to optimize SKUs and reduce costs. Its data science set of tools has an interface easy enough for beginners and powerful enough for experienced users. It has also enabled […]