News and Analysis
GroundTruth CMO: ‘Most Brand Marketers Struggle with Marketing Vanity Metrics’
The role of a marketer changed drastically in 2023. Rather than being centered on brand, advertising, and digital marketing, brand marketers today are focusing more heavily on strategic areas, like marketing analytics, revenue growth, innovation, and market entry strategy. Surveys show that while firms are slowing their investments in customer relationship management systems, brand building, […]
Hair Care Today…$41B Tomorrow: The Growth of a Category
Hair care is a rapidly-growing category for multi-location brands. As part of our future-forward series, we’ll cover categories that are on the upswing in the MULO (multi-location) ecosystem, along with trends that will impact individual brands’ survival and growth. Intellectual capital has value, but what’s ON our heads can be as lucrative as what’s in […]
Social Marketing Gets Redefined in the Era of AI
In an era where everyone is trying to get more done in less time, generative AI has become a valuable tool for social marketing professionals. According to a new survey from Sprout Social, conducted by the digital insights firm Cint, 71% of social media marketers have already started using AI and machine learning tools, and […]
Commentary
Advantages of User-Generated Content in Online Retail
User-generated content can assist in yielding revenue for your online business. It can help you engage and retain customers as well as convince and inspire new ones. Furthermore, it’s an efficient way to interact with your audience across channels, enhance your website content, and boost your social strategy.
Clubhouse Has a Major Notifications Problem
Before sitting down to write this piece, I got dozens of Clubhouse notifications in just a few hours. This flood of alerts piqued my curiosity. So, I went to Twitter and searched “Clubhouse notifications,” and a long thread of tweets by annoyed Clubhouse users emerged in my results. No, I was not alone.
Latest Posts
The Hidden Costs of Mobile Ad Fraud
Some businesses treat the problem of ad fraud as a “tax,” considering it to be an unavoidable cost of digital advertising. Fraudsters siphon up to 30% of any given advertiser’s budget using a variety of tactics, such as app install farms or click spoofing.
While this wasted spend is certainly of consequence, accepting ad fraud as a tax of doing business assumes that your drained budget is the only side effect (an inherently flawed approach). Ad fraud, if left to run rampant, poses additional threats to your performance and business.
How Political Campaigns Leverage Location Data in an Era of Virtual Events
Political ad spending is expected to reach record highs this cycle, topping $6.89 billion in the 2019/2020 election period. This cycle’s spending is 63% higher than spending in the 2015/2016 season. Tapping into location data to make that advertising more relevant has taken a bit more creativity than usual.
How Brands Can Support the Safe Return of Youth Sports to Communities
As the school year kicks off virtually for many children and families across the nation, all eyes are turning to the possibility that youth sports could help provide much-needed activity, socialization, and emotional support during an otherwise overwhelming and disorienting time. Without a doubt, youth sports in a pandemic must look a lot different than they did in pre-pandemic times, but one thing is truer than ever: Brands can play a valuable role in helping youth sports return safely to the field and enabling the kids who need these activities the most to participate.
How E-Commerce Sites Can Remain Competitive in a Rapidly Accelerating Digital Age
Customer experience isn’t anything new, but new ideas can be applied here, especially in the digital space. The question now revolves around how to create the same welcoming environment you’d create in a physical store online. It can be as simple as choosing colors for your website to elicit certain moods or using certain tech features like a chatbot to welcome customers as they “enter” your store. And it’s about making sure that customers can find your store — and this is where our affiliates become a key part of our strategy.
How Much Is Your Data Worth? A New Tool Will Help You Find Out
Facebook, Google, Amazon, Twitter, Pinterest, and countless other technology giants have expanded their collection of consumer identity data, even as privacy regulations like the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and California’s Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) have gone into effect. A new tool from Killi serves as an educational resource, giving people a way to calculate the value of their personal data based on the platforms they use every day.
Killi’s new tool asks consumers to enter their email addresses and select the platforms they currently use. The tool references public quarterly revenues and daily/monthly active users, as well as data aggregators like Statista, to arrive at the value amount of each consumer’s personal data.
How Accurate Geolocation Data Fosters a Better Customer Experience
Having the most reliable data the first time you ask for it is a no brainer for the consumer, but its obvious importance is often overlooked by the provider. Data quality should be a dominant component to support a business’ reputation. But what if the data were slightly off? What implications does that have?
Why Contextual Ads Are Generating More Interest
Increased attention to consumer privacy is shifting the way advertisers do business. One of these shifts is the increased embrace of contextual advertising, which shows Internet users ads based on the content of the sites they’re searching, not based on their previous digital activity.
I checked in with John Clavadetscher, president and chief commercial officer at Cooler Screens, for more on why brands are taking up contextual ads and what benefits the format offers.
Rebuilding Retail with Customer-First Experiences Online and In-Store
There’s so much discussion around returning to the old normal, but retail’s future depends on getting as far as way from normal as it can. Retailers need to seize the opportunity and reimagine the experiences they provide—and create the next normal.
What would this look like? As a guiding principle, retailers should be finding ways to put the customer first in the experiences we provide.
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