News and Analysis
Which Pandemic-Driven Retail Trends Are Here to Stay?
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 […]
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 + […]
Commentary
How L’Oréal and Other Innovative Brands Are Reinventing the Store Locator
It’s true that most consumer searches originate with Google and other search engines and that consumers often find the information they need in third-party properties like Google Maps, Yelp, and TripAdvisor without the need to turn to the business website. But these sites and apps have limitations, only making certain fields and features available and generally presenting a uniform, abbreviated view of businesses.
Store locators, along with their companion properties, local store landing pages, offer a far greater degree of freedom for introducing features that differentiate a brand from the competition.
How to Create an Engaging Mobile Ads Strategy in 2020
The median clickthrough rate for ads on Google Display Network has decreased 32% since the last quarter and is 41% lower than this time last year. These figures indicate that audiences just aren’t receptive to mobile ads despite companies’ attempts to target ad messaging to specific groups.
Mobile advertising is not going to go away — the industry is expected to surpass $240 billion by 2022. However, companies need to take a dramatically new approach to see positive returns on their investment. Here’s how to stand out from the crowd and secure better conversions with mobile ads.
Location Weekly: Verizon Deploying Voice-Activated Digital Signage in Store
In this episode of Location Weekly, the Location-Based Marketing Association covers Amazon giving customers money to purchase their data, Verizon deploying voice-activated digital signage in stores, Eight O’Clock Coffee hosting Java Parties, and Telluride converting old gondola cars into dining cabins for winter.
Latest Posts
5 Ad Tech Predictions for 2020
Charmagne Jacobs, VP and head of global marketing and partnerships at Adslot, shares ad tech predictions for 2020, including the rise of zero-party data, first-party’s data’s increasing importance, the return to contextual ads, and a shift toward more premium programmatic executions.
2020 Arrives: How Brands and Marketers Can Survive the New Decade
Brands have an obligation to adhere to what their customers care about, but given how easy it is for people to digitally project an aspirational lifestyle, it’s no wonder brands are having a tough time understanding who their consumers are and what they want from the brands they support. To combat this knowledge gap and align what consumers say with what they actually do, we need more real-world intelligence.
Dispatch from CES: Giant TVs, Obsequious Gadgets, and Artificial People
I’m fresh from a couple of days wandering the halls of the Consumer Electronics Show, affectionately known as CES — the annual conference that descends upon Las Vegas in January and proffers the latest in technological solutions to improve every aspect of our daily lives. This is my first time attending the world’s biggest technology conference, where 4,500 companies this year are vying for the attention of 180,000 attendees, according to my Uber driver.
As I made my way through the crowds at the massive Las Vegas Convention Center and other conference venues, I tried to get a sense of the common themes defining consumer innovation as we begin a new decade.
Gimbal App Gives Consumers More Choice, Privacy Controls
While the digital marketing industry waits for full enforcement of California’s Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) to go into effect later this year, the mobile advertising, location solutions, and data company Gimbal is actively working to position itself as a leader in the consumer privacy space. The company recently launched a mobile app called LocationChoices, which gives consumers more control over how their data is used. Gimbal is also building a coalition with other industry players that would give participating vendors a way to systematically honor the requests of individual consumer opt-outs.
LBMA Presents Location Weekly: Predictions for 2020
Curious about the future? 2020 will be more dynamic for the location industry than the past year.
This week on the Location-Based Marketing Association podcast, we are talking about our expectations and predictions for location-based marketing.
Local Search Association Rebrands as Localogy
In 2019, updates to Google’s local search algorithms and changes in the way consumers use mobile devices caused a shift in the way local businesses marketed themselves online. Digital marketing firms have been quick to pivot to meet market demand. As of today, one of the industry’s most influential not-for-profit associations is making a change as well.
Local Search Association (LSA), a not-for-profit association of companies focused on local and location-based marketing, will now be known as Localogy. The name change is part of a larger rebranding effort as the group looks for ways to better showcase its mission to re-invest in the changing nature of local business.
Leveraging Consumer Data in the Privacy Era
Industry executives are working overtime to help their clients maintain their current marketing practices without running afoul of the latest privacy regulations. Over at Tealium, a firm that specializes in customer data management and protection, Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer Mike Anderson is encouraging clients to focus on the customer experience of consent while clearly articulating why they need consumers’ data.
“You can’t build customer profiles if the data isn’t there,” Anderson says. “There’s a level of education needed at the point of consent to show the consumer what value they will get in return when they opt-in.”
Making Human Connections in the Age of Automation
The end of the decade marks a challenging time for marketers as they attempt to envision the next 10 years. At the turn of the 2010s, no one could have envisioned the advanced AI-powered marketing and campaign automation tools that are available today.
Despite access to smart technology, modern marketers still must balance multiple factors to create business value for all stakeholders, including eliminating boring, ineffective ads, grappling with the automation myth, embracing the data privacy age, and maintaining ethical AI practices.
Brave CEO Brendan Eich on a Privacy-by-Default Future for Digital Advertising
In light of last week’s enactment of the California Consumer Privacy Act and our monthly theme, Pursuing Privacy, Street Fight posed questions on surveillance capitalism, privacy, Big Tech, and the future of digital advertising to Brendan Eich, CEO of Brave, one of the leading companies championing privacy-first solutions in the tech industry.
“The entire industry is in need of a fundamental shift from tracking to privacy by default and by design,” Eich said. “To truly preserve consumer privacy, Big Tech needs to switch to a privacy-by-default approach. Nothing will change otherwise. Until then, consumers will remain confused about where their data is being used, and tracking and data monetization will remain pervasive on the web.”
Heard on the Street, Episode 42: Building an ‘Appnostic’ World, with Mobile Posse
As much as we love computing, the best technology is that which disappears. Most components of computing are an abstraction layer that stands between you and a given task or experience. That’s the case with layers of the typical consumer tech stack including operating systems, inputs, and apps.
App fatigue is the problem that Mobile Posse, the latest guest on Street Fight’s Heard on the Street podcast, is endeavoring to reform. The company’s Firstly Mobile platform replaces the app-heavy paradigm with a more curated, personal, and ‘appnostic’ front end to reduce the distance between users and quality content.
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