News and Analysis
“Search Fractured” and Healed by Corey Quinn
Join us in LA on September 30th at Street Fight LIVE 2025 and learn what you need to know about branding, search, and (most importantly), growth and ROI in 2026 and beyond for the MULO (multi-location) ecosystem. The consumer decision-making process is radically different from what it was even last year, and thought leaders like […]
Universal Ads, Backed by Comcast, Launches AI-Powered Video Generator
Universal Ads, a Comcast-owned advertising platform designed to make television as easy to buy as social media, has launched a new AI-powered video generator that lets advertisers produce broadcast-ready commercials in minutes. The move underscores Comcast’s broader strategy to invest in and modernize the adtech stack, making premium TV advertising accessible to businesses of all […]
This Hummingbird is Soaring! A Chat With Emily Steele
Influencers, influencers, creators, creators everywhere! “Where is the ROI and long-term benefit?” C-level executives are asking. Founder Emily Steele, is helping to answer that question and will take the stage at Street Fight LIVE 2025 to share the fast-paced success of her business and talk about how the creator economy is evolving, with an emphasis on […]
Commentary
Mass Appeal vs. Local Love: Who’s Really Winning the Loyalty War?
Customer loyalty is the golden ticket for sustainable business success, but the question remains—are broad, mass-marketing strategies capable of winning hearts, or do localized approaches create the genuine connection customers crave? The challenge for brands, especially those with multiple locations, is deciding how to strike the right balance between scale and intimacy. It’s not a […]
Streets Ahead: Google’s Search Labs and Optimizing for AI Search
In this week’s Streets Ahead update, SOCi discusses Google’s Search Labs latest experiment and optimizing local pages for AI search. Google’s Search Labs Tests AI for Business Leads The News Last week, Google’s Search Labs introduced a new experiment called “Ask for me,” an AI-powered feature designed to call businesses on your behalf to gather […]
Finance Is Questioning Your Marketing Value: Can You Prove Your Worth?
Marketers today are facing an overwhelming number of challenges. Too many channels, each claiming to be the key to driving performance. Finance teams are questioning whether marketing investments are truly profitable. As a result of this pressure, many brands have shifted their budgets toward performance-driven digital channels, prioritizing conversion metrics that validate their short-term decision-making. […]
Latest Posts
8 MULO Ad Trends 2025
The 2025 advertising season kicks off annually with the Super Bowl. Brands spend millions and attempt to out-do each other with cinematic artistry and celebrity appearances. Savvy brands take those trends and enhance them throughout their digital footprints, ensuring that visitors to TikTok, Instagram, and brick-and-mortar stores will notice and, ultimately, pull out their wallets (physical or […]
The Rise of AI Ad Buying Agents: A Marketer’s Perspective
AI-driven ad buying is not new. From Google Ads’ “set-it-and-forget-it” approach to Meta’s dynamic audience targeting, the goal has always been to automate away the tedium of bidding and targeting. But with the more recent advancements in generative AI and deep learning, the promise is morphing into something more expansive: real-time, hyper-personalized ads that match […]
Seedtag’s Contextual AI Seeks to Understand Multi-screen Content
Is multi-screen contextual targeting at a granular level even possible? With Contextual AI, Seedtag aims to make it a reality sooner rather than later. The global contextual advertising company specializes in serving ads across the open web and CTV, which is rapidly expanding its reach but struggles with precision audience targeting. Targeting to broad genre […]
Vistar Media and Western Union Partner Up for DOOH Ecosystem
Vistar Media, the leading global provider of technology solutions for out-of-home (OOH) media, just announced an agreement with Western Union to manage and monetize its growing network of more than 2,200 digital out-of-home (DOOH) screens across the United States, Canada, and Brazil. The global out-of-home (OOH) advertising market is projected to reach $42B billion in […]
Streets Ahead: Instagram AI-Powered Search, TikTok Creator Search Insights
In this week’s Streets Ahead update, SOCi covers Instagram’s new AI-driven search feature and TikTok Creator Search Insights Instagram’s AI-Powered Search The News Instagram is testing an AI-powered search feature within the comments section, according to AdWeek. This new tool automatically generates AI-driven search summaries, offering users relevant context as they engage with posts. 🔹 […]
Study Reveals Why You Got those Ads
We’ve all been served ads that made us wonder, “How’d that sucker get in my feed?” The answer is inefficiency. Adlook, a global media tech company specializing in digital advertising solutions, conducted a study that showed how outdated data results in reaching the wrong audiences with ads. The chief offender is demographic targeting. In a poll […]
Not Your Momma’s Market: The Grocery Store Embraces Technology
Like all other MULO (multi-location) industries, grocers or more correctly the grocery store sector is amplifying its use of technology to aid the shopping experience, increase consumer preference, and streamline buying and inventory management. Swiftly, a leading integrated retail technology platform trusted by grocers like Target, IGA, and Save Mart, recently announced a major expansion […]
Going Local with Paige Sawin of Sparkcatcher Media
Paige Sawin, President of Sparkcatcher Media, won our virtual scavenger hunt at Street Fight LIVE 2024. She knows the local search space intimately and works with brands to ensure that when people search “near me,” her client brands, products, and services can be quickly and effectively found. We sat down with her to discuss the […]
Why Q5 Signals a Shift for Ecommerce in 2025
The start of a new year always marks the end of the holiday season, and as the frenzy of Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Boxing Day subsides, many retailers shift their focus away from advertising, assuming that consumer interest and spending have peaked. But in reality, a lucrative Ecommerce opportunity remains hidden in plain sight: […]
Yext Scout: AI-Powered Search & Competitive Intelligence Agent
Yext officially launched Yext Scout, its new AI-driven search and competitive intelligence agent, designed to help multi-location brands navigate an increasingly complex and fragmented search landscape. With consumers turning to a mix of traditional search engines (Google, Bing) and AI-powered platforms (ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Grok) to discover businesses, brands must understand where they appear, how […]
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“Why Aren’t We in ChatGPT?”: The New Question Agencies Must Answer