News and Analysis

Why Emotional Marketing Offers Greater Resonance Now Than Ever

With the economy in a state of flux, and federal interest hikes constantly on consumers’ minds, it’s no surprise that marketers are choosing to be more selective about where they spend their budgets. One area that isn’t facing a downturn is the e-commerce app industry, where marketing spend for attracting new shoppers to apps is […]

UserTesting Integrates with Contentsquare, Links User Feedback to Actual Experiences

UserTesting Integrates with Contentsquare, Links User Feedback to Actual Experiences

UserTesting, a technology firm that helps businesses get rapid customer feedback, is partnering with the digital experience platform Contentsquare to make it easier for businesses to gauge the performance of their digital experiences. The partnership, announced just this week, allows UserTesting and Contentsquare clients to unlock additional customer experience insights across all digital properties, and […]

Multi-Location Marketing Mistakes That Could Tank SEO Success

Multi-Location Marketing Mistakes That Could Tank SEO Success

As a marketing professional, you probably know how to avoid common industry pitfalls. But even if you think you’ve got a foolproof strategy, you can always count on Google to throw another curveball your way. And if you’re not thinking ahead, you could easily fall behind. With that, consider these five commonly overlooked marketing mistakes […]

Commentary

Google’s Ad Changes: The King Just Built a Moat Around His Castle

The initial frenzy over Google’s news regarding its latest privacy updates has abated, and now it’s time to really think about what it means – for Google, for brands, and for the industry as a whole.

As governments have lit a fire under brands and consumers have become more data-conscious, the future of marketing and advertising is unfolding before us. Let’s take a dive into what it all really signifies.

Brand Marketing 2.0: Brand is Back, But Expectations Have Changed

The allure of immediately seeing metrics like clicks, downloads, or form completions outweighed instincts to make investments that pay dividends over the longer term. No longer.

Sprint to Success with Agile Marketing

Even though agile marketing has been around for a couple of decades, keep in mind that it’s a modern approach for today’s marketers — in keeping with the focus on data. With the right martech to support performance measurement needs (using metrics that are credible outside of marketing), you can sprint to success with agile marketing.

Latest Posts

How Small Businesses Can Conquer E-Commerce for the Holidays

As the pandemic continues, consumers are shifting their expectations of brands as well. They don’t just want coupons in their email anymore, they expect an intuitive browsing and checkout process, accurate inventory and out-of-stock notifications, curbside delivery, and fast shipping.

E-commerce is already a must-have, and small businesses who understand this and take steps to offer their customers a way to buy online will create a memorable experience, more long-term loyalty, and ultimately more sales this holiday season.

Mobile Ad Network Vungle Acquires Mobile Ad Platform AlgoLift

Vungle helps mobile app developers monetize their apps through advertising and connects advertisers with mobile app media. The AlgoLift purchase will help Vungle’s advertisers better solve for attribution and optimize in-app ad spend.

Facebook, Holocaust Denial, and the Refusal of Politics

Facebook’s long-term refusal to strike down Holocaust-denial content is not a problem specific to Facebook. It’s not a decision limited to Zuckerberg or a few feckless executives. The problem is not even limited to tech.

Facebook’s purported refusal of politics — its reluctance to accept that it has always been a political actor and that its content-moderation policies and algorithms have real-world effects on what people believe and what they do, up to and including acts of physical violence as in Myanmar — is a structural feature of shareholder capitalism. A content ecosystem whose leaders are so timid as to let Holocaust denial flourish is the logical result of an approach to management that views its only responsibility as minimizing costs and maximizing market capitalization.

How In-House Agencies Can Provide Value During and After Covid-19

When asked what the most critical resources for producing ads post Covid-19 were, 55% of ANA members said in-house teams, as compared to 42% for other internal teams and 26% for external agencies.

In many respects, Covid just accelerated the already impressive growth of in-housing. Moving forward, these teams’ proximity to the business and growing strategic importance mean they are in a good position to deliver greater value to their organizations in three critical ways.

CCPA’s Impact: Businesses Prepare for Fall Surge in Data Subject Requests

In a customer set with more than 16 million consumer records — with consumer records being defined as a single, individual record associated with a unique email address within a database — DataGrail found that people are largely taking action to control their privacy by exercising rights provided by the CCPA.

Consumers opt-out of their personal information being sold “most” of the time, and deletion requests make up 31% of all data subject requests. Twenty-one percent of consumers have accessed their data thanks to the new regulations.

Here’s Why October Is the Perfect Time to Pressure-Test Holiday Strategies

With consumers still spending – and their evolving shopping preferences and behaviors becoming increasingly clear for Halloween and beyond – October presents a prime opportunity for retailers to pressure-test and refine their holiday 2020 strategies. 

Here are three considerations as we enter one of the most critical quarters in retail’s history.

Location Weekly: BMW Geo-Fencing, Gimbal Acquiring TrueX, Amazon One Payments

In this episode of Location Weekly, the Location-Based Marketing Association covers BMW geo-fencing E-Drive zones, IKEA’s “Buy With Time” campaign in Dubai, Gimbal acquiring TrueX from Disney, and Amazon One letting you pay with a wave of your hand.

Self-Serve Restaurant Ordering in a Post-Covid World

We expect to see a continued rise in touchless retail shopping and contactless transactions à la Amazon Go Stores.

But one of the less-discussed technologies in the Covid-advantaged bucket is self-serve mobile restaurant ordering. The idea is that ordering and paying from your table can reduce server interaction — which has Covid and non-Covid benefits considering it can save diners’ lives and their time.

Putting Context Over Coordinates with New Location Encoding Standard

Context over coordinates. That’s the premise behind a new standard universal location ID called Placekey, which launches publicly today.

By offering a standard for identifying any physical place, the team behind Placekey is betting that advertisers and other data scientists will have an easier time joining disparate datasets and unlocking deeper insights. The platform was developed by SafeGraph, and it’s already been endorsed by heavy-hitters such as Esri, CARTO, Billups, Skyhook, and Nielsen.

How Marketers Should Prepare for an Abnormal Holiday Season

Marketers overuse the word “unique,” but the adjective actually applies to this year’s holiday season. Consumer-facing brands and retailers have not faced such an adverse economic environment for more than a decade, and they have never grappled with a Q4 in which driving customers to their stores came with daily, life-or-death stakes.

I spoke to Michele Marzan, chief strategy officer at MainAd, about these holidays’ unprecedented challenges and unexpected opportunities.