News and Analysis

Experiential Marketing: Connections Over Impressions

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Experiential marketing is the future of advertising, not just because it’s fun for participants and makes them feel more connected to the brand – though that’s true in a well-executed campaign. It’s the future because it’s more effective. As Business News Daily notes, when people participate in a brand experience or interaction, 40% say they […]

Stirista Acquires Customer Portfolios

Stirista Acquires Customer Portfolios, a Strategic Lifecycle Marketing Provider

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While many martech firms are retracting in 2023, Stirista is looking at expansion. The data-driven marketing company is acquiring Customer Portfolios, a Boston-based strategic lifecycle marketing provider, in a bid to bolster its customer acquisition marketing solutions with an integrated first-party data platform. “We are thrilled to welcome the talented team at Customer Portfolios to […]

Which Pandemic-Driven Retail Trends Are Here to Stay?

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Many of the changes to retail shopping that took place during the pandemic-era were transient. Demand for curbside pickup and contactless delivery, for example, peaked in 2020 and 2021.  Other changes in retail trends have been more permanent.  Across the country, retailers are continuing to see surging interest in mobile shopping and contactless payments.  Fifty-percent […]

Commentary

3 Ways SMBs Can Beat Competitors With Tech in 2021

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As Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff recently put it, digital experiences are no longer nice-to-have features but need-to-have services for all businesses. Let’s look at three important ways SMBs can meet this new digital imperative head on in 2021 while beating competitors down the street.

Your Flagship Store Should Be Digital in 2021

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The customer experience must be the central tenet for all brands in 2021. The retail changes that occurred in 2020 have made e-commerce the highest and most important expression of your brand. A digital-first approach to retail is now required to create frictionless experiences across channels.

CDPs and Martech M&A in 2021

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Ad and martech companies will thrive this year by leveraging their ability to provide brands and advertisers with new strategies to win in a post-Covid environment. CDPs will become the new DMPs and CRMs, and M&A will accelerate.

Latest Posts

How Z-Axis is Set to Level Up Localized Marketing Post-Covid

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The margin for error is thin and every dollar counts. Accuracy and precision are top of mind, as advertisers continue to long for reliable data to make the most strategic decisions in their advertising spending, especially in the digital space.

Advertising technology and localized marketing platforms built their business on the use of GPS signals to provide real-world KPIs like foot traffic attribution, allowing businesses large and small to go beyond the click to reach and engage more precise audiences. And while this technology has certainly improved from its early days, it can only go so far without the introduction of another dimension: z-axis.

Influencer Marketing Stands Out during Pandemic

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Covid-19 is capable of producing a special kind of advertising fatigue in which consumers tire of receiving a maelstrom of indistinguishable messages from brands: This is an especially uncertain time. Here are the precautions we’re taking. This is what we’re doing to help out.

It’s not that these messages aren’t necessary, especially as they relate to safety precautions. The fatigue comes from the unrelenting sameness and impersonal character of the content. That’s where influencer marketers can prove to be a brand’s special weapon, and a new report by influencer marketing platform Linqia suggests marketers are capitalizing on the channel.

How to Solve the Franchise PPC Cannibalization Problem

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Working with dozens of franchise brands, it’s been interesting to see how digital teams have structured their national pay-per-click (PPC) programs. Actually, maybe “interesting” isn’t the right word. It’s more so concerning. Many are so narrowly focused only on their national campaigns, they’re aloof when it comes to the local campaigns their franchisees are running. If corporate marketing teams are running digital campaigns on behalf of local franchises, they’re likely not set up and optimized in such a way where they’re being given enough TLC to drive meaningful results at the local level. While some brands get it right, many others have failed miserably. 

The ideal scenario is executing local store PPC correctly alongside and in cooperation with national programs and gleaning insights from the data on one program to benefit the other in a symbiotic fashion.

App-ads.txt is an Anti-Fraud Tool, but for Publishers, it’s Really About Revenue

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The IAB hasn’t mandated the adoption of app-ads.txt. In other words, it’s still the Wild West out there when it comes to fraud. But even the publishers that have done the right thing by adopting app-ads.txt have gotten the wrong message about the tool because it’s been presented entirely as a compliance matter. As a result, many mobile publishers treat app-ads.txt as a perfunctory anti-fraud measure that they can “set and forget.”

The Video Ad Market’s Challenges and Future

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Short-form video platform Quibi drew a slew of mainstream headlines beyond advertising trade publications for far underperforming expectations. The platform’s execs blamed its relative failure on coronavirus. 

While coronavirus alone may not explain the fate of Quibi, the virus and related drops in economic and social activity have left the video ad market in a paradoxical state. Viewership is up; ad demand is down. To explain the state of the market and where it’s headed, Tal Chalozin, CTO and co-founder of video ad platform Innovid, spoke to Street Fight.

How Restaurants Can Capture More Customer Demand With Email

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Email is often the primary channel for restaurants to stay in touch with customers and let them know about changes. When email is done right, there are many small ways restaurants can use it to personalize messaging, drive more engagement, and make their lives easier with scalable best practices.

Heard on the Street, Episode 53: Pioneering Audio Out-of-Home

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We’ve all heard of out-of-home advertising: staples such as billboards and subway ads. Audio is one of the oldest forms of advertising, from terrestrial radio to pandora. Shopper marketing has been around for decades to steer in-store shoppers with last-mile messaging.

These are all common staples of local advertising. But combine them, and you may have something interesting. This combination of OOH, audio, and shopper marketing is what Vibenomics calls audio out-of-home. It gives retailers a way to more intelligently monetize the soundwave inventory in their locations through targeted messaging.

6 Ways To Use Hyperlocal Data To Rebuild in the Covid-19 Economy

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Location is a prime indicator of our interests, purchase habits, and daily behaviors. Where we go defines who we are, and in the Covid-19 world, location continues to tell that story, even if the story has changed for many of us as we practice social distancing.

Marketers continue to command vast data sets for campaign targeting. Here are six data sets, powered by location behaviors, that marketers can use to build awareness, generate leads, and drive sales.

Location Data Firm Unacast Generates Hyperlocal Covid Recovery Metrics

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Location data and analytics firm Unacast is hoping its new recovery analytics tool might guide businesses through this chaotic time. The interactive tool allows retail operations professionals, real estate developers, and property management companies to drill down to the census block level to get visibility into real-world economic recovery scenarios and plan for future investments.

Using data that compares real-time public behavior in the current environment to pre-Covid time periods, businesses can estimate recovery rates and more accurately plan for future reopenings.

GMB Insights Predict a Slow Path to Recovery

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Last month, we shared the results of a study of consumer behavior in the first phase of the pandemic. The study based its findings on analysis of Google My Business Insights data for multi-location brands whose online presence is managed by Brandify, covering some 16 different business categories.

Today, we’re updating that study with data from the month of May — data that demonstrates clear evidence that consumers are returning to stores and other places of business that were hard hit by the shutdown. Our findings show, however, that recovery for suffering businesses may take quite a long time. And by contrast, some businesses for whom the pandemic resulted in a boom in activity are still showing remarkably high consumer traffic.