News and Analysis

With AI for Shelf Checking, Google Gives Retailers What They Want

With AI for Shelf Checking, Google Gives Retailers What They Want

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Google’s announcement that it would be enhancing Google Cloud for Retailers with shelf checking got people talking at the National Retail Federation’s conference in New York earlier this month, but the push to turn physical stores into digital assets has been underway for years.

How Brands Are Using Interactivity to Shorten the Purchase Cycle

How Brands Are Using Interactivity to Shorten the Purchase Cycle

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With brands expected to pull back on media spending during the first half of the year, media buyers are looking at stretching their ad budgets to activate in more meaningful ways. 

Why and How Retailers Are Dropping Very Generous Return Policies

Why and How Retailers Are Dropping Very Generous Return Policies

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COVID ushered in a period of free and limitless returns as retailers scrambled to keep shoppers at a time when stores were closed. But the worst days of COVID are in the rearview mirror, and the 2023 macroeconomic environment provides no succor for overly generous policies.

Commentary

Snapchat’s “Promote Local Place”: The Deeper Dive

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Snapchat’s 200 million users can now use Snap Map to find businesses in addition to finding friends. These two activities can go hand in hand if friends are discovered nearby on the map when users are planning local adventures.

But what matters most for local is that Snap will now let businesses promote themselves in the map interface, adding a key option for local advertising. This will happen on a self-serve basis for both SMBs and multi-location brands.

Fulfilling The Potential: How to Execute A Dynamic Creative Optimization Strategy

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Dynamic creative optimization, or DCO, is a hot topic for many digital advertisers. The opportunity to personalize your creative’s look and message for different segments is appealing. However, it is easy to forget that DCO is a tool, not a strategy. 

To fulfill the potential of DCO, you need a DCO strategy that pulls three levers at the same time.

Emerging Trends Shaping the Future of Parking

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The fluctuating need for car parking spaces is a source of frustration and concern for city officials all over the world. In the US alone, there are said to be between 105 million and two billion spaces – which is potentially more than the number of cars in existence across the globe. While during busy periods, such as the holiday season, these extensive parking lots are likely to be filled, most of the time they sit empty and unused. 

This is wasteful when growing urban areas are constantly in need of more space for housing, schools, and business development. But an array of technologies and technical processes such as automation, the Internet of Things, and self-driving vehicles promise the potential transformation of parking lots and, with them, cityscapes themselves.

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5 Cannabis Payroll Platforms

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Growers, dispensaries, and other businesses that operate in the legal cannabis industry are caught between federal and state regulations, which make banking and payroll a challenge. Despite marijuana being legal in many states, cannabis businesses are still on shaky ground at the federal level, and banks in particular are skittish about partnering with the industry. Without solid banking partners, local cannabis businesses can have trouble keeping up on payroll. So what’s the solution?

Rather than waiting for Congress to make a decision on potential regulations that would shield banks from federal punishment for maintaining accounts for cannabis businesses, more dispensaries and growers are moving toward using web-based cannabis payroll platforms designed specifically for their industry.

Is Visual Mapping the Next Google-Apple Battleground?

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As Google and Apple lead the way, we are getting closer to ubiquitous visual mapping. If that happens, there will be significant implications for entities that currently use search and mapping for marketing or online presence. They’ll need to make sure they are optimized in this new format.

This could lead to an extension of SEO to cultivate presence in visual experiences. Just like in search, correct business location and details will need to be optimized to show up in the right places. You don’t want the AR overlay for your restaurant floating above the salon next door.

Hyperlocal Social Firm Nextdoor Closes $170M Round, Adds Meeker to Board

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The company seems well positioned to address the ills of social network and platforms plagued by negative user-generated content in general these days. That’s because it actually verifies the identities of its users and puts people in touch who live near each other in the physical world, definitely not eliminating all risk but limiting the chance that people use digital anonymity to harass each other without repercussions.

Inform Your Multichannel Customer Experience Strategy

The Number-One Reason Consumers Will Delete Your App

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It’s easy to get your app deleted from consumers’ phones at a time when every businesses has its own mobile property and social notifications are wearing consumers down. If you want to get deleted, just message your customers all the time, a new study by messaging platform Leanplum found.

The most common reason consumers deleted mobile apps is too many irrelevant notifications, Leanplum’s survey of 1,000 US mobile users found. This held true for all generations, from Gen-Z to Baby Boomers. More than 75% of the crucial millennial generation said they delete apps due to excessive notifications.

Mobile Far Superior to Desktop for DTC Advertising

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DTCs are notoriously effective in courting young shoppers, including millennials and emerging Gen-Z consumers. This is likely because younger shoppers, growing up in the digital age and native to its conventions, gravitate toward convenience and are less tied to the longstanding preferences that legacy brands carefully crafted through decades of advertising. Mobile, which is tied to identity and location and offers quick digital purchasing options, is the platform where these trends are most exaggerated.

Gimbal Innovates to Track Consumer Trends in the Physical World

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For years, marketers have used Google Trends to uncover insights based on search data. Now, executives at the advertising and marketing automation platform Gimbal are hoping their newest product will serve the same purpose for the physical world.

Built on top of an independent location data set, Gimbal Trends has been designed to provide marketers with a comprehensive view of consumer behavior in the real world. The product was released this morning, and already Gimbal is seeing interest from companies in the entertainment industry that are interested in leveraging the data to optimize their decision-making processes about upcoming events.

Apple’s Edge in the App Store, Big Tech, and Antitrust

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Apple execs told the Times that the company’s apps show up so frequently in searches not because it tips the scales but because its apps are already very popular and are designed to please consumers. But that logic is in itself concerning: A company with nearly unparalleled power and insight into what consumers are looking for in terms of apps uses its understanding of consumer desire and vast resources to create apps that will defeat rivals (especially startups or young companies) in the App Store it owns. Even if there is no foul algorithmic play, the competitive advantage is clear. The question is whether it’s enough for antitrust action.

Insight-Driven Retail: The 3 Must-Knows for Retailers

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Each day, retail pricing is becoming more and more scientific with retailers leveraging precise analyses of rich, complex datasets to identify the correct prices for goods, services, and other value drivers such as branding. However, while adopting such a forward-thinking, analytic pricing strategy can have significant business impact, there are several areas that retailers need to keep top of mind when it comes to collecting data and preparing it for analysis. 

Here are three of those key areas.

7 Indoor Mapping Platforms for Retailers

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More than half of shoppers (57%) have used a retailer’s mobile app while in-store. In order for their apps to provide the greatest amount of value, retailers need to tap in to location features, including indoor mapping. When Street Fight first wrote about indoor mapping tools back in 2013, the technology was still relatively young. Now, the market has had time to mature and retailers looking at integrating indoor mapping technology into their mobile apps have an even wider array of vendors to choose from.

Here are seven companies with indoor mapping solutions for retailers.

6 Recruiting Platforms for the Marijuana Industry

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Cannabis startups are struggling to recruit job candidates who understand the cannabis market, which is opening the door to an entirely new vertical for technology firms with recruitment platforms. With the market itself still in its infancy, a handful of key players are vying to become the go-to recruiting sources for the cannabis industry as they work to match employers with job seekers who understand the state-by-state rules and regulations that govern the marijuana market.