News and Analysis

Meet the Street Fight LIVE 2025 Speakers: Part 2

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We’re just weeks away from Street Fight LIVE 2025 on September 30th in Los Angeles at Microsoft’s Playa Vista headquarters. What better place to tackle the huge impact that tech, AI, and digital media is having on the brick-and-mortar business ecosystem? Plus, the ecosystem itself is rapidly changing, with retailers, restaurants, service businesses, convenience stores, […]

Blis AI Platform Offers Deeper Targeting

Blis AI Platform Offers Deeper Targeting

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Blis, recently acquired by T-Mobile, has launched Blis AI, a platform that uses foot traffic data and other real-world signals such as in-store sales to help brands with audience building and media planning. If a brand wants to reach moms during back-to-school shopping season, they can enter KPI parameters such as “foot traffic,” and Blis […]

Swiftly Program Enables Circle K and its Brand Partners

Swiftly Program Enables Circle K and its Brand Partners

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Retail technology platform Swiftly has partnered with Circle K, a mobility platform, to make it easier for alcohol buyers to get cash back rebates, eliminating the friction and time waste involved in traditional mail-in ones. Swiftly’s Alcohol Cashback platform works with a Circle K app that enables targeted, real-time promotions by product, category, and geography. […]

Commentary

Data Drama: Why Your Insights Are All Talk and No Action Street Fight

Data Drama: Why Your Insights Are All Talk and No Action

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Data has become the backbone of modern marketing, promising brands the ability to predict trends, personalize experiences, and drive customer loyalty like never before. For multi-location businesses, the stakes are especially high. With endless streams of customer data pouring in from numerous locations, the expectation to turn this information into actionable insights seems like the […]

Will the Privacy Push Kill the Addressability of Streaming TV Advertising? Street Fight

Will the Privacy Push Kill the Addressability of Streaming TV Advertising?

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As ad-supported streaming platforms gain momentum, they promise to revolutionize advertising by offering unprecedented addressability—tailoring ads to individual viewers based on their interests. However, this promise is at risk of being derailed by privacy regulations and the limitations of contextual targeting, which may force the industry to revert to strategies reminiscent of traditional TV. For […]

Streets Ahead: TikTok Past the Ban, Global AI Adoption Street Fight

Streets Ahead: TikTok Past the Ban, Global AI Adoption

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In this week’s Streets Ahead update, SOCi discusses the current status of TikTok  and global AI adoption trends TikTok Past the Ban The News TikTok went offline for U.S. users on the evening of Saturday, January 18, shortly before a 2024 law’s deadline took effect on Sunday. Sixteen hours later, on the morning of January […]

Latest Posts

IHOP & Applebee's Serve Up Huge News Street Fight

IHOP & Applebee’s Serve Up Huge News

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From hot cakes to happy hour, a new co-branded restaurant in Texas now gives diners a wide range of food options.  Applebee’s and IHOP (owned by the same operator) announced this new concept last month. Those who love breakfast for dinner and power-eaters who want to start the day with a Bloody Mary and a […]

8 MULO Ad Trends 2025

8 MULO Ad Trends 2025

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The 2025 advertising season kicks off annually with the Super Bowl. Brands spend millions and attempt to out-do each other with cinematic artistry and celebrity appearances. Savvy brands take those trends and enhance them throughout their digital footprints, ensuring that visitors to TikTok, Instagram, and brick-and-mortar stores will notice and, ultimately, pull out their wallets (physical or […]

The Rise of AI Ad Buying Agents: A Marketer’s Perspective StreetFight

The Rise of AI Ad Buying Agents: A Marketer’s Perspective

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AI-driven ad buying is not new. From Google Ads’ “set-it-and-forget-it” approach to Meta’s dynamic audience targeting, the goal has always been to automate away the tedium of bidding and targeting. But with the more recent advancements in generative AI and deep learning, the promise is morphing into something more expansive: real-time, hyper-personalized ads that match […]

Seedtag’s Contextual AI Seeks to Understand Multi-screen Content StreetFight

Seedtag’s Contextual AI Seeks to Understand Multi-screen Content

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Is multi-screen contextual targeting at a granular level even possible? With Contextual AI, Seedtag aims to make it a reality sooner rather than later. The global contextual advertising company specializes in serving ads across the open web and CTV, which is rapidly expanding its reach but struggles with precision audience targeting. Targeting to broad genre […]

Vistar Media and Western Union Partner Up to Build OOH Ecosystem Street Fight

Vistar Media and Western Union Partner Up for DOOH Ecosystem

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Vistar Media, the leading global provider of technology solutions for out-of-home (OOH) media, just announced an agreement with Western Union to manage and monetize its growing network of more than 2,200 digital out-of-home (DOOH) screens across the United States, Canada, and Brazil. The global out-of-home (OOH) advertising market is projected to reach  $42B billion in […]

Instagram AI-Powered Search, TikTok Creator Search Insights StreetFight

Streets Ahead: Instagram AI-Powered Search, TikTok Creator Search Insights

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In this week’s Streets Ahead update, SOCi covers Instagram’s new AI-driven search feature and TikTok Creator Search Insights Instagram’s AI-Powered Search The News  Instagram is testing an AI-powered search feature within the comments section, according to AdWeek. This new tool automatically generates AI-driven search summaries, offering users relevant context as they engage with posts. 🔹 […]

Adlook Study Reveals Why You Got those Ads Street Fight

Study Reveals Why You Got those Ads

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We’ve all been served ads that made us wonder, “How’d that sucker get in my feed?” The answer is inefficiency. Adlook, a global media tech company specializing in digital advertising solutions, conducted a study that showed how outdated data results in reaching the wrong audiences with ads. The chief offender is demographic targeting.  In a poll […]

Swiftly : Grocers Embrace Technology Street Fight

Not Your Momma’s Market: The Grocery Store Embraces Technology

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Like all other MULO (multi-location) industries, grocers or more correctly the grocery store sector is amplifying its use of technology to aid the shopping experience, increase consumer preference, and streamline buying and inventory management. Swiftly, a leading integrated retail technology platform trusted by grocers like Target, IGA, and Save Mart, recently announced a major expansion […]

Going Local with Paige Sawin of Sparkcatcher Media Street Fight

Going Local with Paige Sawin of Sparkcatcher Media

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Paige Sawin, President of Sparkcatcher Media, won our virtual scavenger hunt at Street Fight LIVE 2024. She knows the local search space intimately and works with brands to ensure that when people search “near me,” her client brands, products, and services can be quickly and effectively found. We sat down with her to discuss the […]

Why Q5 Signals a Shift for Ecommerce in 2025 Street Fight

Why Q5 Signals a Shift for Ecommerce in 2025

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The start of a new year always marks the end of the holiday season, and as the frenzy of Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Boxing Day subsides, many retailers shift their focus away from advertising, assuming that consumer interest and spending have peaked. But in reality, a lucrative Ecommerce opportunity remains hidden in plain sight: […]