News and Analysis

Brand Halloween Holiday Creep 2023

Brand Halloween Holiday Creep 2023

Before you could even put away your beach chair and utter “Pumpkin Spice,” Halloween accessories, boxes of tinsel, faux trees, and December lights began thier holiday creep and began to appear on store shelves. MULO (multi-location) retailers have changed the traditional sales cycle and accelerated the holiday shopping schedule. Halloween 2023 began in July, as […]

Grocers Navigate the Shift from E-commerce to In-Store

Grocers Navigate the Shift from E-commerce to In-Store

More than half of e-commerce grocery customers have left the channel since last year. Where have they gone, and what can grocers do to bring them back? That’s the question many supermarket chains and retail marketers are trying to answer. According to new data from SymphonyAI Retail CPG, 52% of e-commerce grocery customers have left […]

BUST: The Wrong Time for Rite Aid

BUST: The Wrong Time for Rite Aid

Bankruptcies and store closings have hit the retail world hard this year. Bed Bath & Beyond was the most notable, and Christmas Tree Shops and Jenny Craig are among the other retail brands that closed doors in 2023.  Rite Aid is the latest MULO (multi-location) brand to suffer the impact of retail shrinkage. Although the […]

Commentary

What Brands Can Do When the Cookie Crumbles

As third-party cookies are phased out, brands will have to stay nimble to weather the transition successfully. It’s a good idea to shift focus to contextual marketing and build up first-party data now. Keep an eye on better alternatives like Unified ID 2.0, and watch how agencies are adapting. That way, you’ll be ready when the cookie crumbles.

Ad Tech and Privacy

Anonymized, Localized Shopper Data Offers a New Beginning for Brand Marketers

Rather than fear upcoming changes, marketers should welcome the steps being taken to safeguard consumer data privacy and recognize the opportunity to leverage the massively rich, privacy-compliant consumer data sets that are still available to them.

Using Business Insights to Complement Automation and Optimize Search Strategy

With automation leveling the playing field, marketers need to find new ways to use their proprietary business intelligence to keep an edge over their competitors in search. Marketers can add immense value to automation, maximizing its ability to drive strong performance.

Latest Posts

Super Bowl Advertising

The Customer Touchpoints Businesses Aren’t Thinking Enough About

Businesses can’t ignore that more and more of their success is linked to apps and services they don’t own. They need to get a view of customer touchpoints.

One Year Later: How Covid Hit Ad Tech and How It’s Recovering

Covid bludgeoned ad spend, cut budgets, and forced ad tech providers to get crafty to survive. On top of that, 2021 is throwing its own curveballs, especially related to privacy, as Apple and Google downgrade tracking.

How Apple’s IDFA/ATT Change Will Affect App Publishers

If Apple doesn’t change course, we’re in for a possibly very humbling year for SMB app publishers and an App Store that advantages the largest publishers with the biggest wallets

Inform Your Multichannel Customer Experience Strategy

The Comment Section Could Be the Next Big Source of Audience Data

Comments sections can be a source of feedback, wisdom, and community. They can also provide rich, first-party audience data. OpenWeb is betting on the latter.

Firefly Launches StreetIQ Platform with Puma Campaign

The Location-Based Marketing Association covers Firefly launching its Street.IQ platform with a Puma campaign, putting automobile advertising into action.

Contact Center Should Be the Marketing Engine

Expert Roundup: How Will Retail Transform in 2021?

Retail transformation experts expound on Google and Amazon’s approaches to e-commerce, managing customer relationships, and targeting after cookies.

The New Content King: Short-form Audio

With so many hours in the day, people are getting screened out. That’s why audio is coming back with a vengeance.

The Case for Internet Tracking

What does Apple’s IDFA change really mean for consumers? It will undermine personalization, make it harder for SMBs to compete, and upend free services.

The Stakes of Apple’s IDFA Change

The IDFA change means that iPhone users will be asked whether they want to allow tracking when they open apps. It will deal a blow to digital advertising.

Google’s Latest Privacy Play Has Big Implications for the Open Web

Looking for the ‘Big Picture’ in Local Search

Tunnel vision is an issue that’s long plagued the SEO community. Single-location rank trackers don’t tell the complete story of how well a business is really performing in local search results. But with so many avenues to go down in measuring success, it’s almost impossible not to get sidetracked from time to time.  If businesses […]