News and Analysis
Hidden Nuggets in Local Address Data for Retail Decisions
It’s no secret that the past few years have been extremely challenging for inventory managers. In 2021 and early 2022, brands faced widespread inventory shortages, while the latter half of 2022 and 2023 saw massive excess inventory levels (as much as $740 billion in unsold goods) as brands worked to counteract the previous year’s shortages […]
Tinuiti Report: Temu Takes a Break
Somebody must have given Temu a talking to. The e-commerce brand that offers very competitively priced items was glomming up ad inventory across social media throughout 2023 to the consternation of its competitors. And then, just like that… it receded. Temu, which increased its ad spending a whopping 1,000% in 2023 from the previous year […]
Self-Checkout Grows Up (and Sometimes Phases Out)
As the cost of labor skyrockets (especially in California) and the size of the qualified talent pool shrinks for MULO (multi-location) brands, retailers and restaurants are looking for ways to automate and streamline all aspects of their operations. Self-checkout was introduced in the 1980s but didn’t take off and proliferate until 2001. Since their mass roll-out, […]
Commentary
Google Search and the Long Pandemic
As 2021 stretched on, with its vaccine controversies and mutating variants, we realized we were really just living through an indefinite phase in the middle of a long pandemic. Consumer habits, rather than getting back to normal, were settling in to a battle-weary pattern of compromise. It seemed unlikely that local search data would tell us much we didn’t already know. But it turns out the data tells a somewhat encouraging story.
How Augmented Reality Will Change the Way Brands Capture Consumer Attention
The smartphone camera and augmented reality are poised to usher in a new era of branding and advertising and will change the way brands capture consumer attention by expanding the user experience, increasing brand reach, and creating new forms of collectible content.
Putting Power Back in the Hands of Advertisers This Year
The time is ripe for advertisers to take control of their data to make more powerful connections with consumers while improving transparency, engagement, and ROI. As advertising decision makers demand more, the ecosystem is ready to challenge outdated approaches to data and attribution, a groundswell that is certain to achieve positive outcomes in the year to come.
Latest Posts
Yelp Launches Request a Call to Connect Local Service Providers and Customers
Yelp announced this morning Request a Call, a feature that will allow customers to easily submit a request for a call to local service providers. The feature represents Yelp’s acknowledgement that there is still too much friction in the local services customer experience and that listings and review sites can help.
Aircam Pioneers Local Solution for Visual Search
The Rifkin brothers, who also co-founded Burstly, the company behind the mobile app-testing service TestFlight, found a way to pivot by turning their live event marketplace into a geofenced event photography business that offers local semantic photography solutions at scale.
Integral Ad Science Brings Together Contextual Targeting and Measurement
Integral Ad Science announced this morning its Control Panel, a new product that will allow advertisers to plan, measure, and optimize contextual targeting campaigns in one place.
TruPresence Helps Multi-Location Marketers Audit SEO Across Locations
Let’s say you’re a marketer at Whole Foods corporate who is responsible for auditing SEO performance across hundreds or thousands of locations nationwide. How do you audit the performance of this given URL, which looks like just a part of Whole Foods’ website but essentially functions like the independent website of a local business? How do you swiftly audit hundreds or thousands of those pages?
What Amazon’s ‘Buy with Prime’ Expansion Means for Local Merchants
Buy with Prime could accelerate Amazon’s growth and merchant adoption of FBA. It could also lead to a shift in order fulfillment volume from the third-party logistics companies that many merchants currently use for order fulfillment over to FBA. That’s good news for Amazon but bad news for third-party logistics companies and post-purchase experience platforms working primarily with mid-size merchants.
Walmart, Snapchat, and Allrecipes Team Up on AR
In this episode of Location Weekly, the Location-Based Marketing Association covers Walmart, Snapchat, and Allrecipes teaming up on AR lenses for healthy choices, Joann stores partnering with Radar for in-store mobile offers, HomeStart saving families from eviction by selling digital apartments in the Cornerstone metaverse, and Italian start-up VADO connecting vending machines to delivery apps like UberEats.
Reveal Mobile Launches OOH Measurement Platform
The location intelligence and geofencing marketing software company Reveal Mobile launched a self-service out of home measurement platform this morning. The platform delivers insights for “traditional, digital, place-based, programmatic, and moving OOH ad campaigns,” according to the company.
GumGum Partners with Xandr on Transparent Ad Solution
With growing demand for cookieless targeting solutions, the contextual-first global digital advertising platform GumGum announced a partnership with Xandr on an accredited cookieless solution for advertisers. Xandr now becomes the first major DSP to offer GumGum’s contextual intelligence technology, Verity, to allow brands to ensure their ads are placed in contextually relevant environments.
The Ongoing Challenge of Reputation Management for Multi-Location Brands
The good news is that the bar is relatively low for a brand to exceed the median reputation performance level of all multi-location businesses. The bad news is that brands are still struggling to implement comprehensive review response programs.
How Local Human-Driven Outreach is Helping Multi-Location Restaurants Grow Sales
Seeing first-hand the challenges that restaurants are facing as the founder and CEO of the digital marketing startup Field Day, Alex Nocifera recently rolled out a local subscription service that uses human-to-human connections to help restaurant brands manage local sales opportunities for catering. The program is primarily aimed at local franchise operators, offering last-mile marketing outreach to drive demand.
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Meta Is Automating Ads, But Brands Still Face a Bigger Problem