News and Analysis

Back-to-School Shopping Is Happening Earlier Than Ever — Retailers Prepare

As kids across the country empty their desks and prepare for a long summer break, brand marketers are working overtime to solidify their 2023 back-to-school campaigns. With back-to-school sales seeming to start earlier and earlier each year, researchers at the digital insights firm Cint recently conducted a survey to gauge consumer interest around back to […]

Curb Wants Brand Enthusiasm for DOOH

Curb Wants Brand Enthusiasm for DOOH

Generating more than two billion impressions annually across 25,000 in-taxi media screens in most major DMAs, Curb (formerly Verifone Taxi Systems), a DOOH advertising and payment platform for car services, reaches “captive” audiences of millions. Its Taxi TV screens offer geotargeting, real-time RSS data integration, dayparting, and POI targeting to clients. Curb has been a […]

Thumbtack, Scorpion Streamline Marketing for Home Services |

Thumbtack, Scorpion Partnership Streamlines Marketing for Home Services Pros

The digital martech provider Scorpion is partnering with the home management platform Thumbtack, in a first-of-its-kind integration announced just this week. With the deal in place, Thumbtack’s customer base of small business owners and solopreneurs working in the home services industry will be able to utilize Scorpion’s advertising and communications tools to get more leads […]

Commentary

Reflections on 2020 in Local: Innovation by Necessity

From a big-picture perspective, innovative tech providers are recognizing that SMBs don’t need all the bells and whistles that may come with an enterprise solution. They need tech that solves critical everyday problems that are common across the local landscape. 

Can Immersive Marketing Boost Local Businesses?

One of the emerging technologies driving innovation amid Covid is AR. For example, its ability to add real-life interactivity to e-commerce gained traction in 2020. This could extend to a post-Covid world of “touchless” retail for in-aisle virtual product interaction.

3 Ways Local Content Drives Customer Connections

Social distancing is here for the long haul, but consumers are still craving social connection. Brands can fill in the gaps by maximizing their digital presence on the key search and social platforms, such as Facebook, Google My Business, and Yelp, where consumers are spending increased time online.

Latest Posts

How Google’s Review Attributes Expansion Impacts Local Businesses

Businesses that understand these changes and find ways to harness review attributes stand to see major gains in search. Google’s new feature could be a big improvement for small and mid-size businesses, in particular, since it provides marketers with both comparative structured feedback and sentiment. But whether businesses benefit from Google’s decision to expand review attributes into new categories depends largely on how they capitalize on the changes.

Big-Box Stores Will Win the Reopening, but Mask Expectations Are High

New consumer insights uncovered by Resonate are painting a picture for what to expect as lockdown restrictions start to lift. According to our latest wave of consumer sentiment research, shopping behaviors are already starting to shift dramatically. But that doesn’t mean consumers are fully ready to resume their previous daily lives, particularly when it comes to venturing into stores.  

Location Weekly: Mobiquity Technologies Tracks Covid-19

In this episode of Location Weekly, the Location-Based Marketing Association covers PopID and Wasserstrom releasing a facial recognition and temperature screening system, Locomizer launching its High Streets Recovery Tracker with Centre for Cities, Mobiquity Technologies releasing “hot spot” algorithms to measure Covid-19 traffic, and Moving Walls acquiring Ahoy.

Restaurants Are Using Technology to Bring Back Customers Post-Pandemic

How do local restaurants implement coronavirus-driven changes, and what role will technology play in helping those businesses reemerge from lockdown status?

Statewide regulations, like sanitizing protocols and spacing between tables, are in many ways easier for restaurants to implement because they are clear-cut. Certain diner expectations are harder for restaurants to gauge, and that has presented a new opportunity for technology providers catering to the restaurant market.

States are Reopening. It’s Time to Start Thinking About OOH Again.

Ultimately, we know that people will go back outside. And they’ve already done so, with the average distance traveled amongst Americans up at least 28% since the first week of April, according to Geopath and Intermx. With more consumers back out on the roads, OOH will rebound to “become more valuable than ever.” Now is the time for agencies and brands to get ahead of competitors, revisit their OOH strategies, and smartly phase them back into plans.

Here are five things to consider.

Video Marketing: A Definitive Guide for Fitness Businesses

There’s a good chance that you’ve seen competitor brands using video marketing and that you’ve heard it’s the next big thing. You may, however, not be sure if it really is a viable option for your fitness business. If this sounds like you, keep reading. 

I’ll share all you need to know about using video marketing for your brand. I’ll cover how you can develop a video marketing strategy, types of videos you can create, and bonus tips to help you elevate your video content. But first, let’s look at why video really is the next big thing.

Can a Pandemic Inflect Local Commerce Tech?

Could forced adoption of alternative shopping methods like curbside pickup lead to user acclimation? Will millions of shoppers get exposed to the merits of these streamlined options and like what they see? Will new habits be born that sustain throughout normal times?

If so, these technologies — along with virtual-office enablement — could benefit from this period as a blessing in disguise for exposing their value propositions. But who stands to benefit most? We’ve identified five local commerce tech areas to which this could apply.

Mobile Commerce Bounces Back

Companies investing in existing user engagement are smart to do so. According to mobile monetization and marketing company ironSource, the average global cost to acquire a single paid install from an individual user in 2020 is $2.24 — which adds up quickly when you start to scale into thousands or hundreds of thousands of users.

So, while it’s important to keep spending on acquisition, retention and retargeting, informed by smart audience segmentation, are perhaps even more essential to ensuring app marketers are monetizing all of their users. 

Cannabis CBD

Cannabis Businesses Are Running More Geofenced Campaigns. Here’s Why

While geofenced campaigns and foot traffic attribution are old hat for mainstream brands, they represent a new frontier for cannabis businesses.

Despite widespread legalization in many states, the cannabis industry has been shut out from many of the most effective marketing and advertising strategies. In some cases, those restrictions come in the form of strict state and federal laws. In other cases, it’s simply due to a lack of ad tech platforms willing to accept their campaigns.

But times are changing, and new doors are opening up to businesses in the cannabis industry.

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.