News and Analysis
Boutique Health & Wellness: The Birth and Expansion of Stretch Zone
As the population ages and becomes more health-conscious, a new retail category is emerging — specialty storefront wellness. We’ll cover other multi-location brands in high-growth industries and category creators in the months ahead. Wellness is a $450B category and is rapidly accelerating. Multi-location retailers are picking up on that and launching products and brands that […]
Report: Higher Income Adults Drive Podcasting Growth
What makes podcast listeners so loyal to the brands that advertise on their favorite shows, and how does that sense of loyalty translate to real world sales? Those were just a few of the questions asked by the customer experience platform DISQO in its new report, released last week. As the podcast landscape evolves, brands and […]
Vericast Launches Contextual Advertising Solution
The marketing technology firm Vericast is changing its approach to contextual advertising by launching a privacy-centric solution meant to help brands reach relevant consumers in the moments when they’re most likely to be receptive. The proprietary solution bolsters Vericast’s in-house targeting capabilities. It matches ads to the content from consumers’ view or search, and it’s […]
Commentary
Data Science Enables ABM to Achieve Its Full Potential
ABM’s evolution must begin with finding ways to achieve greater levels of personalization that will enable marketers to identify, target, and engage the stakeholders within organizations who wield the real power when it comes to making buying decisions. Only when the targeting challenge is solved can the attribution problem be addressed.
Gowalla Returns with AR Location Lenses
In this episode of Location Weekly, the Location-Based Marketing Association covers the GroundLevel Insights and Town of Whitby Project, Vodafone rolling out centimeter-level tracking, GPS tracking for dementia patients with GTX Corp solution, and Gowalla coming back with AR location lenses.
Latest Posts
Blocking Third-Party Cookies Will Not Mean the End of Marketing Attribution
The demise of third-party cookies will not mean the end of digital advertising and the ability to assign proper attribution to individuals engaging in various touchpoints along the buyer journey. Several entities are currently hashing out other methodologies brands can leverage to retrieve audience analytics.
Marketing attribution providers will continue to provide reliable data to enterprise marketers on consumers and their customer journeys through the sales funnel. Attribution providers worth their salt will not only make sure they are compliant with the tightened rules around cookies but also ensure their clients are following the letter of the law.
Ditch the Department Store: How DTC Brands Take Back Control
We are anticipating monumental online sales volume for brands with the approaching holiday season. To capitalize on this transition to online shopping, DTC (direct-to-consumer) brands must take back control of their sales channels. DTC brands can’t control whether big-box retailers open their storefronts or the number of consumers they allow inside. They also can’t manage the customer experience with the brand, especially given the many variables Covid-19 has thrown at brick-and-mortar retail.
The one thing brands can control is their online sales channel.
California Attorney General Targets “Low-Hanging Fruit” for CCPA Non-Compliance
The California Consumer Privacy Act enforcement period began July 1, and two months later, numerous firms have received letters from the attorney general’s office about noncompliance. Multiple major companies, including Walmart, Sephora, and Ring, have been hit with class-action lawsuits.
But there’s no great mystery or nefarious agenda tied to the companies that have been targeted as this point, says Dan Clarke, president at IntraEdge. To avoid meeting the same fate, companies need to adhere to the fundamentals of the nation’s first major statewide privacy law. Clarke spoke with Street Fight to explain.
More Brands Are Scaling Digital Channels for Customer Engagement — Here’s Why
Communicating with brands on social media has become the norm for consumers. Surveys show that roughly half of all consumers who engage with brands on social media are reaching out about customer care concerns, and more than 65% of social media users across all platforms expect brands to respond, regardless of whether the initial outreach was via private messages or public posts.
Those expectations have only heightened over the past six months, and many brands have had to pivot their customer support and engagement priorities on the fly.
Location Weekly: Burger King and Wawa Innovate for Covid Era
In this episode of Location Weekly, the Location-Based Marketing Association covers Wawa launching drive-through-only convenience stores, Waze launching contactless gas payments at Shell and Exxon Mobil, Burger King printing customer orders on face masks, and Heineken launching its “Star of the Summer” campaign at Tesco UK.
Who’s Afraid of CCPA? Steps Toward Ethical Data Collection
The marketing and advertising communities are inherently about data collection. They survey and track people’s online behaviors to uncover a deeper understanding of trending sentiments. Through this, the ultimate goal is to help marketers better target the right audiences with messaging that will resonate with them on the platforms they typically frequent.
While data privacy should be a given considering how central it is to the industries at hand, it’s often still seen as a challenge to overcome. So, where is the problem?
How Covid-19 Is Speeding Up OOH Advertising’s Digital Transformation
Some OOH media providers have already moved beyond the traditional real estate-based approach in which advertisers focus on a specific region or even choose specific billboard locations. Instead, they are using data and technology to target specific audiences and measure the impact of their campaigns. For the laggards, the pandemic is proving a catalyst for overdue change. Let’s consider why OOH’s audience-based future is closer than ever as well as what is next for the industry’s evolution.
Earnings Season Teases Retail’s Next Normal
Earnings results that rolled out from retail giants over the past week further demonstrate what our next normal will look like. Specifically, Walmart and Target both hit record numbers. This is partly a function of Covid-era circumstances, but it is also due to each retailer’s active e-commerce momentum.
The earnings validate consumer acclimation to digitally infused local shopping. What’s more, other retailers and down-market businesses will look to replicate this success. This can all therefore be viewed as a leading indicator for retail’s next normal.
Political Advertisers’ Impact on Brands
A recent report from eMarketer found that political ad spend will reach $6.89 billion in the 2019/2020 election period. This cycle’s spending is 63.3% higher than spend in the 2015/2016 season, showcasing a significant uptick in competition for brand marketers. That said, political advertisers are becoming savvier, expanding their breadth and scale into additional channels and further encroaching on brands’ digital bread and butter.
Here are a few ways political ad spend will impact brand marketers’ approach and how they can adjust their strategies so they don’t lose momentum in the coming months.
More Americans Are Using Delivery. The Change Is Here to Stay
Delivery has perhaps been the industry most clearly affected by the Covid-19 pandemic. When physically going to brick-and-mortar stores became a life-or-death exercise, delivery, which had already grown under the rise of e-commerce, became an even more essential part of how local commerce functions.
Khaled Naim, co-founder and CEO of delivery software company Onfleet, touched on how delivery has changed in the past months, how long those changes will persist, and what technologies are fueling the widespread increase in deliveries.
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