News and Analysis
Did the Music Die or Just Take a Beat as Sam Ash Closes Stores?
Music stores used to be wildly popular. Although many still exist and vinyl records have made a comeback, the MULO (multi-location) music store category is struggling. Sam Ash recently announced that it’s closing 18 of its 45 stores throughout the U.S. The first music store opened in the U.S. in 1759. Sam Ash sells instruments […]
BOOM: Shopping Malls are Back!
A new study by Placer.ai confirms that shoppers are returning to malls. That’s great news for legacy MULO (multi-location) brands and new concepts like pickleball, pop-ups, and eatertainment venues, which are filling spaces left vacant by department stores and other big-box retailers. The study reveals five key findings and trends: Visits to malls are getting […]
The MULO Dozen: March Brands in Review
Openings, closings, leadership changes…the MULO (multi-location) beat goes on! Here are some highlights related to the people, technologies, and brands in the MULO ecosystem. Have news? Please e-mail me. And save the date — Street Fight LIVE is coming to Chicago on November 7th! The convenience store (C-store) industry is going through a major transformation and […]
Commentary
How AI Is Driving the Next Generation of Ad Creative
Most industries have a healthy fear that artificial intelligence is going to render humans obsolete (and even possibly take over the world). But for the digital advertising industry, if applied the right way, AI has the potential to improve production and performance by making more room for original ideas without stripping away reliance on humans.
The Future of CTV Advertising: What Brands Need to Know
With chatter pointing to the fact that we are entering an endemic era globally, many brands and marketers are discussing how to make their ad budgets drive positive outcomes in what may be another tumultuous year ahead. As the number of CTV viewers continues to rise, so will ad spend; the latest projections forecast CTV ad spend to grow by 23% in 2022.
‘Good’ Third-Party Data Rides to the Rescue
The “good” third-party data comes from non-cookie sources, such as demographic maps, the use of discount and loyalty cards, public records about real estate transactions, and many other sources, because it’s diversified and anchored to real-world activity. And getting more contact points using third-party data doesn’t just help with marketing outreach, it also helps with linkage, deduplication, and updating or corroborating dated information.
Latest Posts
More Brands Are Going DTC. Here’s Why
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.
Cookies Are Expiring, But One-to-One Experiences Don’t Have To
Social data, or social audience insights, make a cookieless world a lot less ominous by providing a more transparent way for marketers to connect with their audiences. Here are three key differences between third-party cookies and social audience insights.
Don’t Fall for the Cookieless Trap
In the quest for future-proof advertising, effective and privacy-safe solutions should be the end goals. What we’ve stumbled upon, though, is chasing the need to declare a product or technique “cookieless,” as if that distinction alone will solve marketers’ issues going forward.
Street Fight’s April Theme: Mobile Madness
Privacy changes have been the big ad/martech and data industry story for the past year, and a major part of that story has been changes on mobile, especially those launched by Apple and to a lesser extent Google. We’ll be diving into those changes this month with a theme called Mobile Madness that centers on the latest approaches to mobile marketing as well as the challenges and opportunities currently facing mobile measurement.
4 Things Publishers Need to Do to Grow their Audience Data
Creating scalable audience solutions is proving to be difficult even for the largest publishers and very hard for anyone beyond that. Missed monetization opportunities could be a deathblow to publishers, and seeing that more than half are unable — or unprepared — to scale their audience solutions is cause for concern.
Location-Based Marketing Association: Mavi.io Launches OnMyWay App to Enable In-Car Ordering
In this episode of Location Weekly, the Location-Based Marketing Association talks about Snap teaming with SignAll to develop AR filters using ASL, Instacart partnering with Oriient for their IndoorGPS tech, Philadelphia’s transportation departments (OTIS) using location data for real-time bus arrival information, and Mavi.io launching OnMyWay app for ordering from your car.
The Growth of Visual Search
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
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
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.
Impacts of a Cookieless Future
Preparing for the end of third-party cookies now enables you to take advantage of the benefits of the alternative approaches available to you. The sooner you start, the better equipped you’ll be to minimize negative impacts on your marketing KPIs — and even find new ways to grow.
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Meta Is Automating Ads, But Brands Still Face a Bigger Problem