News and Analysis
Regulators and Enterprises Get Serious About Digital Privacy Rights
The wild west days of digital privacy are coming to a close. As European Union authorities step up enforcement of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and U.S. lawmakers continue their debate around regulating big tech, C-suite executives are being forced to step up their privacy initiatives.
Commentary
What First-Party Data Can and Can’t Do For Agencies
Make no mistake, first-party data will play a critical role in the future of marketing, as it always has. But agencies as trusted advisors, and the industry overall, need to be realistic about what first-party data can and can’t do for clients, especially in the face of a global pandemic that has upended everything we thought we knew about consumer behavior.
Managing a Remote Team: 3 Tips From a Cool Manager
Striving to be a cool manager in the workplace is one thing, but managing a remote team in a global pandemic presents a whole new set of challenges that none of us had ever experienced before. Your team may face distractions when working from home, technical difficulties with video calls, a poor internet connection, among other unusual challenges.
When confronted with these issues, it can be hard to hold your team accountable and maintain positive relationships in the same ways you did previously. But as a manager, it’s your time to step up to the challenge, reassess your leadership strategy, and keep your cool while navigating the new normal.
Location Weekly: Realworld Launches Adfindr for Local Ads
In this episode of Location Weekly, the Location-Based Marketing Association covers Merrell using voice and location to highlight nearby trails, Burger King’s Scary Places, Foursquare’s Marsbot for AirPods, Realworld launching Adfindr, and a new case study from Oriient on indoor positioning.
Latest Posts
Don’t Fix What’s Broken. Reinvent the Wheel with a Unified Measurement Framework
By facing the harsh truth that we need to lean into disruption – instead of patching up past approaches or creating inadequate work-arounds – our industry will build something better that helps us increase value in our marketing spend. Shifting to CMM would provide a framework to address the full business (not just marketing) needs, and help us all be ready to adapt through data-driven decision making. And when you can adapt, you can build competitive advantage, evolve, and thrive.
Retailers Succeed at Listings, Struggle on Rankings, Review Response
Retailers scored best on average on listings, suggesting that management is succeeding at getting multi-location stores to optimize the fundamentals of their online presence. The poorest average category score, rankings, indicates brands are failing to pop up when consumers search for unbranded items. At a time when consumers are increasingly searching for items “near me” instead of brand-name stores where they could find those items, businesses stand to gain if they invest in non-brand-specific keywords.
Street Fight’s February Theme: Beyond the Screen
Consumer touchpoints continue to fragment and atomize, disrupting conventional approaches to media and tech. Drivers of this trend include devices from smart speakers to cars. Accordingly, as we roll into February, the Street Fight editorial team is thinking outside the box — that is, beyond the rectangles that frame our typical screen interfaces.
We will provide deep coverage of emerging technologies including voice search, visual search, augmented reality, and 5G. How are tech providers innovating with these modalities? How are users adopting them? And how are local marketers tackling the opportunity?
E-Commerce Trends to Watch This Year
The answer to solving the personalization dilemma lies in data. Retailers that are able to both harness and analyze data will be able to make the calculated decisions to improve their customer experience and give shoppers the personalized process they desire. However, only 27% of global retail and wholesale purchase influencers say that improving the use of data insights is currently a top priority. Artificial intelligence and machine learning tools can help dissect the data retailers receive, but it starts with the desire and capability of getting smarter about customer experience.
LBMA Presents Location Weekly: Placer.ai Raises $12M; X-Mode Acquires Assets of Location Sciences
On this edition of Location Weekly from the Location-Based Marketing Association: X-Mode acquiring the assets of Location Sciences, Placer.ai raising $12M, Stasher getting $2.5M to help travelers stow their luggage, MGI acquiring Verve, Kroger launching a new lab on digital grocery innovation, and H&M launching pay later with Klarna in the US.
As Privacy Regulations Shake Out, New Winners Emerge
Not even one month has passed since the implementation of California’s newest data privacy regulations, and some winners and losers are already beginning to emerge. As companies across the country work to comply with this new state law, fundamental shifts are happening and some brands are going back to an older style of data collection and usage.
How this retreat is viewed depends on who you’re talking to. Industry veterans like Dawn Colossi, chief marketing officer at FocusVision, see the return to more traditional forms of data collection as a good thing. Others in the industry have a different view on what returning to older forms of data collection will ultimately mean for technology and marketing firms.
How Viewers Watch the Super Bowl—And Its Ads
Even the Super Bowl does not make for entertaining enough television to get today’s fickle viewers to glue their eyes on the big screen and set cellphones aside. During the game, viewers also text (29%), play mobile games (28%), and browse social media apps (27%), mobile firm AdColony found in a global survey.
The numbers may even seem low; it seems fair to bet more than one in three viewers takes an eye off the game to text a friend. But AdColony manager of strategy and planning Gabriella Stano Aversa said marketers should not treat the multiscreen environment as a dilemma, seeing it rather as an opportunity.
Do Cashierless Stores Present a Privacy Risk to Consumers?
Amazon’s convenience stores rely heavily on location technology to track consumers’ movements inside buildings. Cameras analyze shopping behaviors, strategically placed microphones listen to conversations, and information about consumers’ shopping habits is stored in a central database that Amazon can reference for future operational and strategic planning.
“As cashierless stores take off, more and more personal and payment data will be transmitted through phones and mobiles devices and stored in cloud-based software platforms,” says Ruston Miles, chief strategy officer at Bluefin. “This means that hackers will have more network access to this data through vulnerable providers and merchants.”
Capitalizing on the Big Game Buzz on a Shoestring Budget
Iconic moments in Super Bowl history like Oreo’s ‘Dunk in the Dark’ Tweet prove that ads are no longer the only path for creating noise. Smart businesses can capitalize on the game with strategic social content but should not over-rely on it. Instagram and Facebook are notorious for outages during big moments such as Thanksgiving Day in 2019. Twitter has also experienced its fair share of downtime, with outages across platforms lasting as long as 24 hours.
Instead of zeroing in exclusively on social channels, why not deliver a one-two punch by also serving up relevant content on your business’ blog and website? Here are a few tips to maximize content across marketing channels.
Turn Your Side Hustle into a Booming Startup
Finding success in a side hustle is exciting, and turning it into a profitable startup is even more so. You’ll hit a few roadblocks when starting out — everyone does! Figuring out where to target your audience and recognizing the appropriate time to hire help are crucial to overcoming them.
Though you may see burnout as an inevitable side effect to side hustling, it doesn’t have to be. Protect your energy and maintain perspective on the overarching goals you want to accomplish. It may require more than a typical nine-to-five, but entrepreneurs who remain digitally active and seek inspiration and support from their industry peers will find a rewarding career.
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