News and Analysis
BUST: When 99 Cents Goes to Zero
Making change takes on a whole new meaning, as 99 Cents Only stores, a MULO (multi-location) business with close to 400 stores in four Southwestern states, will close down all its locations and liquidate its inventory. The brand, founded in 1982, was known for pricing all its goods at under $1, a novelty at the […]
Free Food
As sophisticated as marketing and technology have become among MULO (multi-location) brands, one thing remains true and timeless: People love free stuff — especially free food … stuff to eat. That has been evidenced over the past months by the number of fast-casual restaurants that have incorporated “sampling” into their marketing and customer acquisition strategies. […]
The Rise of Ad-Supported Streaming: Insights from LG Ad Solutions
With the growth of streaming services, consumers are making their preferences clear: they want their content free and supported by ads. The third wave of LG Ad Solutions’ annual study, titled “The Big Shift: Wave III,” sheds light on the evolving habits and preferences of Connected TV (CTV) users. With data collected from over 1,100 […]
Commentary
Location-Based Marketing in 2021 — and What to Expect for 2022
In this episode of Location Weekly, the Location-Based Marketing Association reviews location based marketing’s 2021 events and covers what the industry can expect this year.
Beyond Localization: How Ultra-Targeted Email Newsletters Help Publishers Drive Engagement and Revenue
For many years, email had been overlooked and undervalued as new channels emerged to steal the limelight — and budget. Now, this stalwart channel has come full circle, once again becoming the centerpiece of audience engagement for brands and publishers for its direct, affordable solution to content targeting and personalization. As the industry looks to move forward in a post-cookie world, email is proving to be the most effective and trusted channel for helping publishers drive new revenue and business growth.
Predictions: First-Party Data, Personalization, and Curated Marketplaces
Each month, Street Fight sources expert insights from the businesses in our ecosystem on our theme. This month’s theme is 2022 predictions, and our experts share their takes on first-party data, personalization, curated ad marketplaces, and retail media.
Latest Posts
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.
How Brands Can Better Serve Increasingly Elastic Customers
One of the many things the pandemic has demonstrated is the elasticity of consumers – they’ll continue to consume and ‘snap back’ to their preferred methods, albeit with some new expectations. This is what businesses need to know about the elastic consumer and how they can shift practices to best serve their customers in 2022.
How Brands Can Adjust Marketing to Reassure Customers amid Inflation
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.
Does Anyone Want Hermetic Commerce? A Reflection on Local and the Metaverse
What is it, besides the need of Meta as a public company to develop new marketplaces — and perhaps distance itself from unpleasant contemporary scandals — that is driving such an aggressive vision of the future? Why the metaverse, and why now?
Location-Based Marketing Association: Google Displays Nearby Cars for Sale in Search
In this episode of Location Weekly, the Location-Based Marketing Association discusses DoorDash launching a gas rewards program to offset high prices, SES-Imagotag and UNICEF using electronic shelf labels to drive donations for Ukraine, GroundTruth and Flowcode partnering on QR codes in TV, and Google displaying nearby cars for sale in search.
Snap Scales Up its Geo-Local AR Ambitions
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
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.
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