News and Analysis
BUST: Christmas Tree Shops Declares Bankruptcy and Closes All Stores
We hope the Grinch doesn’t steal Christmas this year, but bankruptcy stole the 82 retail stores of MULO (multi-location) brand, Christmas Tree Shops. The bankruptcy was announced in May, and poor-performing stores were shuttered, but the company recently said that it will close its remaining stores on August 12th, holding a liquidation sale before then. […]
Vericast Goes Deep on Data Privacy with Qonsent Partnership
The martech and data intelligence company Vericast announced a new partnership with Qonsent last week, in a move designed to bolster the company’s consumer-first data privacy strategy. At a time when consumer data is becoming increasingly regulated in the U.S. and abroad, the partnership between Vericast and Qonsent is expected to help brands deliver more […]
How to Track Mobile OOH Advertising: An Interview with Jonathan Frangakis
Jonathan Frangakis has been a champion of out-of-home / OOH advertising for years. He and his brother Gabe founded an OOH analytics platform called Mira in 2014. Mira was acquired by Reveal Mobile, where he serves as its Chief Commercial Officer. He gave us insights into the next wave of moving OOH advertising (as in […]
Commentary
Don’t Call It a Recovery Yet: Small Business Growth Still Lags
Like the consequences of the shutdowns, the recovery is far from uniform. Booming growth, bull markets, crypto surges—these have little relevance to the real-world health of our economy. A decade of “roaring 20s” celebration is possible, but it’s not here yet. If the needs of the smallest firms are not perfectly aligned with the needs of the largest, their recovery won’t be, either.
LBMA: Verizon Announces Hyper Precise Location Service
In this episode of Location Weekly, the Location-Based Marketing Association covers fake restaurants tricking delivery apps and consumers, Dollar Tree getting into the retail media business, Verizon announcing its Hyper Precise Location service, and Stirista releasing its OMNA identify graph platform.
Why the End of Cookies Creates a Problem for Ad Frequency Capping
Without third-party cookies and with fewer individual identifiers from iPhones, aspects of digital marketing that we have come to take for granted and barely think about are about to be seriously impacted. One of these is frequency capping.
Latest Posts
Location Intelligence Beats Fraud
In this episode of Location Weekly, the Location-Based Marketing Association covers Incognia solving QR code fraud with location verification, the Ontario Regiment Museum using an AI virtual assistant, L’Oréal launching virtual make-up for your online work calls, and Covid-19 leading to greater public willingness to share location data.
Retailers Unpack Black Friday Spending Data
Criteo analyzed commerce data from 1,005 retailers in the U.S. and 216 million transactions in the fourth quarter of 2020. In the process, they found that sales in the first three weeks of November were up 7% year-over-year in the U.S., indicating that Black Friday sales may have been down 5% because those purchases happened earlier this year than previously.
3 Factors to Consider Before You Choose a Martech Solution
If you’re among the many marketing professionals who are thinking about adding to their solution stack to manage digital marketing channels, keep in mind that your investment should endure for the long haul. You’ll need to find a solution that helps you improve performance on digital channels while the pandemic persists and afterward as we make our way to a new version of normal. Here are three points to ponder.
As Cookies Crumble, Can Location Data Pick Up the Pieces?
One potential and promising alternative to third-party cookies is location data. Captured from mobile users as they move through the physical world, location data can be used for a range of purposes and personalization.
Real-world visitation patterns offer clues to user identity, brand affinities, and purchase intent. Putting aside that Covid-19 has radically upended movement patterns for the time being, regular airport or hotel visitation can identify business travelers, routine presence in a gym suggests health-consciousness, and weekly fast-food visits implies the opposite. Someone visiting car dealerships is probably an “auto-intender,” and so on.
Adtech Firms Test New Concept with Autonomous Bot Delivery Campaign
While food delivery platforms like Postmates, DoorDash, and GrubHub have all launched no-contact options, they generally rely on human drivers leaving food on the ground outside people’s front doors. With the health risks and potential for mix-ups, it’s less than ideal.
A better solution might be the one being rolled out by Wrapify. Just this morning, the company announched the launch of a first-of-its-kind campaign that could take autonomous bot delivery to the next level.
Street Fight’s December Theme: Leaving 2020
What will the “next normal” look like in the post-Covid era of local commerce? Will things go back to the old normal or be a hybrid reality that cherry-picks components and new perspectives from the past nine months? Will e-commerce dip back down to pre-Covid levels or keep surging?
We’ll be answering these questions and others throughout the month, along with 2021 predictions (’tis the season) for our theme, Leaving 2020.
Why Your Business Should Start Incorporating Social Proof
When it comes to marketing your business, social proofing is one of the most critical and yet overlooked strategies in the book. Consumers seeing what others buy influences them to make similar buying decisions. As an example, when your website has reviews or testimonials from well-known figures in the same industry, that’s social proof in action because the reviews will compel many visitors to buy from you.
In this article, we’ll dive more deeply into what social proofing is, how to incorporate it into your business, and some of the pitfalls of social proofing that you would be wise to avoid.
Data Trends for 2021: Overcoming Digital Ad Uncertainty
With privacy regulations on the horizon, email is a known and comfortable identifier that many consumers self-register and that brands can anonymize in a digital environment with hashed emails for privacy compliance.
While 2020 has thrown a lot of curve balls, marketers that worked to get their consumer data house in order with an eye on ways to better enable their first-party data for a complete view of their most-desired audiences and buying behaviors will survive and thrive as we head into 2021. The newest technology, data-sharing innovations, and identity resolution algorithms won’t help if you don’t have the basics down.
How Local Retailers Can Reach Mission Shoppers this Holiday Season
The mission shopper is focused on getting in and out of stores as quickly as possible. They spend less time, and less money, in stores, and their mindset is different from the lighthearted holiday shoppers of yesteryear—or even last year.
Understanding this consumer archetype will prove critical to retail success this holiday season.
Qualifying and Quantifying 2020’s E-commerce Surge
Spending hasn’t declined — it’s just shifted. One of the themes we’re seeing is that the standouts of 2020 are those who have shifted with it. We’re talking here about a broad definition of e-commerce — not just ordering things online, but any digital or mobile purchase.
For example, in local commerce, these digital fulfillment models include mobile order-ahead functions in QSR and coffee. They also include curbside pickup for physical goods. And in an even broader sense (and looking forward), they will include touchless or cashier-less retail in a post-Covid era of physical retail.
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Meta Is Automating Ads, But Brands Still Face a Bigger Problem