News and Analysis
E-commerce Retailers Need To Address Shoppers’ Rising Security Concerns
Online retailers and brands face a challenging environment as inflation makes shoppers more price-sensitive and increasingly willing to switch brands. E-commerce growth has also slowed somewhat since the early-pandemic boom, and online shoppers’ concerns about payment fraud, scams, and data protection have grown. More than half of consumers in the State of Consumer Attitudes on […]
Why NYC Needed a Rebrand
New York City is making a strong comeback in attracting business and leisure travelers since Covid-19. On March 28, the organization known for 25 years as NYC & Company, responsible for marketing the many NYC attractions inside and outside of the United States, announced its rebrand. It is now called New York City Tourism + […]
3 Ways AI Will Disrupt QSRs: Perspectives from Susan Sly
Susan Sly, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Radius AI (RAI), grew up in the restaurant business in Canada. That’s one of many reasons she has taken a humanistic approach to artificial intelligence, robotics, and technology, believing that if AI is properly executed it can empower retail, QSR, C-store, and other multi-location employees to become confident and […]
Commentary
How Privacy Will Upend Advertising in 2021
Of course, if mobile numbers are adopted as a universal ID, Apple, Google, and Facebook won’t get their way. They will not go down quickly and will likely continue to bury email IDs as a viable solution. We’ll see the entire industry disrupted as each of the powerhouses marches forward with their plans to own the future of privacy, ensuring they monetize the very thing they are touting to protect.
Contactless Pay Is the Next Big Pivot in Retail CX
Remember when Amazon launched Prime? The entire retail customer experience (CX) changed overnight — for everyone. The bookseller-turned-everything-seller suddenly offered low prices and fast and free delivery, leading traditional retailers to pivot drastically to keep up with their mega-competitor.
But sometimes, unexpected CX overhauls are a good thing — especially when competitors have to pivot, too.
Latest Posts
Ridesharing Inches Forward as Industry Looks for New Path
Years of rising demand for ridesharing services came to a full stop this spring, as coronavirus spread and communities across the globe were put under lockdown. Now, as ridesharing services like Uber and Lyft begin inching their way forward toward a new normal, they’re looking at how to adapt to the completely new environment in which they find themselves.
The Fight Against Facial Recognition Tech
Microsoft and Amazon suspended their sales of facial recognition technology to police departments in recent weeks amid nationwide protests against police brutality. IBM went even further, ceasing its research on the subject altogether.
It might be clever and intuitive, but facial recognition technology is highly invasive. Little wonder, then, that across the world, people are joining the fight against its implementation.
Data Enrichment, Your Business, and Your Career
Creating great customer experiences is ultimately what matters most, and this requires a single customer view and data enrichment techniques for a deep understanding of your customer. Organizations that rely on only first-party data are at a disadvantage. They risk missing out on valuable new information as time passes. For example, did your customer just move to a new state or buy a new home?
How Connected TV Ads Help SMBs Recover from Crisis
One medium that will be especially helpful in the recovery is connected TV (CTV). About three-quarters of households own connected TVs, so SMBs can easily reach the public through this ad-supported medium as life returns to normal.
There are many opportunities to excel both in the current and post-pandemic marketing landscape, but businesses will only be able to take advantage of them if they intelligently create demand. Because of this, SMBs should use audience and measurement data to inform their CTV advertising strategies as markets reopen.
Location Weekly: Pinterest Dives into Visual Commerce
In this episode of Location Weekly, the Location-Based Marketing Association hosts Senior IT Manager of Mall of America, Patrick Wand.
The team also covers Incognia launching in US with its location behavior biometrics platform, Liquid Core Gum Co. installing Space Station touch-free gum dispensers, and Pinterest letting its users shop with their cameras.
Why Consumers Want Coupons — And What Kind They Value Most
Amid ongoing reports of consumer fatigue with coupons and declining coupon redemption rates, there is a ray of hope for retailers—mobile coupons. While consumers have a wide range of preferences in terms of their mobile engagement, CodeBroker’s mobile consumer research, based on input from more than 1,500 consumers around the country, offers one takeaway that applies to the masses: Mobile couponing works. There are a variety of reasons that this is the case.
Heard on the Street, Episode 52: Localizing Print Advertising
Digital gets all the attention these days. And rightly so: it legitimately has more robust capability to do things like target audiences and measure results. But we often forget that print media still holds advantages like premium status and deeper engagement.
The ideal approach in advertising is to cherry-pick the best of both worlds. This is where MNI Targeted Media, with a specialty in premium print channels like magazines coupled with targeting expertise, stakes its claim to relevance. MNI director of planning and strategy, Tommy Shaw, joins us on the latest episode of Heard on the Street (listen above).
The Changes Mobile Publishers Must Make during the Economic Recovery
As we modify stay-at-home orders, the news is mixed for mobile publishers. Content consumption during quarantine rose as much as 80%. But advertising has suffered — 38% of advertisers halted all advertising, while 45% paused mid-campaign. It’s an ugly paradox — consumers value their mobile devices more than ever, but publishers are struggling to monetize that value.
Here’s how mobile publishers should prepare for the uncertain road ahead.
MarTech Firms Pivot to Meet Post-Pandemic Demands
The marketing automation company Act-On Software is relaunching today with an affordable solution for companies that are bogged down by budget cuts and lay-offs due to Covid-19 shutdowns, but they’re not the only company making big changes.
In fact, Act-On is just one of a number of martech firms gunning to help businesses as they emerge from Covid-19 shutdowns. Jungle Scout has released a solution for brands leveraging the power of Amazon, Agora.io is expanding its reseller partnerships, and BounceX is using SMS to help retailers recover revenue lost because of Covid-19. Act-On is refining its approach to marketing automation, with new product capabilities meant to drive personal product engagement and a tighter focus on helping marketers evolve their businesses.
Why IP Targeting Has Never Been More Relevant
A lot of money has been invested in slicing, dicing, and tying data to IP addresses to give rich profiles of online users at a very granular level, such as the sub-postal code, and in many cases ZIP-plus-4. IP targeting is certainly not down to a household level, as that defeats the privacy-sensitive nature of these solutions. Plus, IP addresses and internet infrastructure are not really made for that type of targeting. It’s not something that can be done.
But you can get much deeper profiles of behavior once you know that type of granularity around a user. If a business traveler is at a point of interest, for example at a hotel, he or she will have different interests than a residential online user. That involves building context around users―a very valuable evolution in IP targeting.
Street Fight’s Big 3
Street Fight Columns
Street Fight Categories
Why TV Remains the Heartbeat of Local Connection