News and Analysis
Flip Launches MagicOS, a Self-Serve E-Commerce Operating System for Brands
Transparency among social media influencers can be hard to come by. While 80% of consumers say they have purchased products in direct response to social media content, #sponcon scandals are taking their toll and leading to a decline in trust of digital influencers. Could a new e-commerce operating system for brands put the influencer industry […]
Barometer, Katz Partnership Brings Contextual Targeting to Podcasting
Podcasting is huge right now, with 53% of Americans saying they’ve listened to a podcast in just the past month. You know what else is huge right now? Artificial intelligence. OpenAI’s ChatGPT reached 100 million monthly active users in January, just two months after it debuted. It should come as no surprise, then, that Barometer […]
“Omnitalking” with Chris Walton About Trends in the Retail Space
For about twelve years, Chris Walton held various management positions at Target. His last position was VP of “Store of the Future,” when he worked with his Co-CEO of Omnitalk, Anne Mezzenga. They started the Omnitalk venture in 2017, combining their 40+ years of retail experience to focus on game-changing trends in the retail space, focusing […]
Commentary
Location Weekly: Party City and Nextdoor Launch Halloween Campaign
In this episode of Location Weekly, the Location-Based Marketing Association covers Ferrara’s Trolli brand creating an AR game for Halloween, Party City and NextDoor launching a Halloween campaign, Burberry teaming with IBM for product traceability, and Walmart redesigning its stores with a touch of airport way-finding tech.
What Happens to Drive-to-Store Campaigns After Apple’s IDFA Update?
Given that Apple’s Limit Ad Tracking feature already renders roughly one-third of iOS users totally anonymous, drive-to-store conversion measurement has been limited at the device-level for some time. The iOS 14 update from Apple simply adds another challenge on top of what was already a difficult endeavor. For marketers who haven’t done so yet, they should take this opportunity to pivot to measurement strategies that are less reliant on the ever-shifting policies of tech giants like Apple.
Location Data Says Krispy Kreme’s Times Square Plan May Be Half-Baked
As someone who studies human mobility in New York routinely, I am compelled to question the pandemic-era business logic behind this aggressive expansion. The world will go back to normal or something like it one day, but, by using our human mobility data sets and assuming a continuation of current trends, we can see there is little evidence that these new Krispy Kreme locations will draw enough foot traffic in the coming months and quarters to survive, let alone thrive.
Latest Posts
4 Lesser-Known Social Platforms Effective For Marketing
Ask someone to name a social media platform, and you’ll probably get the same answers: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and so on. But it’s easy to forget that there are other powerful social platforms out there carving out a niche for themselves.
For marketers, these present an untapped opportunity. Read on to discover four lesser-known social platforms that will be great for connecting with prospective customers in 2020.
Mobile Drives Sales on Black Friday
Data from ShopperTrak showed a 3% decline in traffic at physical stores on Thanksgiving and Black Friday even though sales were up overall. That’s because retailers with strong online shopping programs saw significant gains, with a reported $9.2 billion spent on Cyber Monday alone.
In an analysis of holiday shopping campaigns, the people-based marketing platform LiveIntent found that brands had a “robust” performance on Black Friday weekend. Total conversions during Black Friday weekend stood at 36% higher than that typical time period. Retailers that pushed mobile shopping saw the greatest gains, as LiveIntent’s analysis found that mobile drove the most traffic.
Retail Q5: Secrets to Maximizing Holiday Social Advertising Campaign Impact
The heightened emphasis on shopping during the holidays is a boon for retailers and advertisers, as brands flood all of our social feeds and airwaves with hot deals—not to mention the ever present cadre of e-commerce offerings also trying to break through. Spending on digital ads is also expected to increase as more advertisers shift their efforts to social media over television and print.
Naturally, much of this social media spending will go to Facebook. It can seem difficult, especially for SMB retailers, to break through the noise. But there is hope if you know how to game the system to be able to maximize the impact of your Facebook ads. There is this concept of “Q5,” which refers to the ~15 day period during just before and after the holidays where the lead time on ground shipping makes shopping online difficult. You’ll hear differing definitions on the exact time frame, and there is a regional element, too, as not everyone lives within one- or two-day shipping distances.
Heard on the Street, Episode 40: Building Location Intelligence, with GroundTruth
The location intelligence sector has gotten crowded in the past five years, making it harder and harder to stand out from the crowd. Making matters more difficult, there are looming restrictions such as location tracking in iOS13 and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). These factors could raise barriers to entry and cause an industry shakeout where only the strongest survive.
On the list of longstanding industry players with extensive networks and location intelligence chops is GroundTruth. As we discuss with CEO Sunil Kumar on the latest episode of Heard on the Street, succeeding in location requires concrete and verifiable data for foot traffic.
It’s Neural Matching: Google Explains the November Ranking Shakeup
A tweet on Monday from Google search liaison Danny Sullivan provides an explanation for the rankings shakeup that has perplexed the local search community since the beginning of November. Google began using neural matching to generate local search results.
Local search has just undertaken a huge evolutionary step. No longer are local results being matched to user queries solely on the basis of identifiable ranking factors, such as proximity to searcher, keywords in business names, primary category of the listing, review count, and so on. That isn’t to say such factors are now unimportant, but they have been augmented by a broader and more general sense of relevance delivered by neural matching.
5 Seed-to-Sale Platforms for Cannabis Businesses
That trend has led to a significant uptick in the number of cannabis businesses using seed-to-sale ERP software. Seed-to-sale platforms give cannabis businesses a way to track and regulate inventory. Although older seed-to-sale systems were challenging for growers to use, updated versions of the most popular platforms have been re-designed to allow growers to more easily track inventory, run smarter operations, and identify crop hazards in a way that still meets current regulations.
Here are five popular seed-to-sale platforms for cannabis businesses.
Retailers Hoping for Record Cyber Monday to Follow Friday Windfall
US retailers set all-time records on Thanksgiving and Black Friday, wracking up $11.6 billion in online sales. Adobe predicts that Cyber Monday will also set a fresh record of $9.4 billion, pushing the Thanksgiving weekend total to nearly $30 billion.
The increasing importance of online sales has forced traditional retailers to compete with e-commerce natives like Amazon not only by offering their own robust set of deals but also by investing in delivery infrastructure and reducing friction for consumers ordering online.
Carriers, It’s Time to Weld the Lid Shut on Customers’ Data
Personalization and privacy seem inherently at odds. After all, media companies such as Facebook act like vacuum hoses for data – collecting much more than they need. That’s problematic in a world where data breaches dominate headlines nearly every week. However, where Facebook and others go low, mobile carriers can go high. In fact, mobile carriers that aim to be media companies have a huge opportunity to respect privacy while providing great personalization in their original content.
So, how can carriers take this high road — that is, deliver personalized content experiences without storing consumers’ personal information? By focusing on the device itself – leveraging local storage and client-side execution (rather than requiring server interaction) to help carriers deliver a personalized experience that is incredibly safe. This allows carriers to implement the industry-changing trend of device-centric discovery (DCD), which makes it easy for subscribers to find news/sports/entertainment/games without having to wade through multiple apps and searches. With DCD, carriers can create personalized content experiences that don’t expose subscribers’ personal data to external privacy risks, and in the process, become mobile media leaders.
December Focus: The Connected Consumer
When looking at several interlocking tech trends — wearables, IoT, smart devices, autonomous vehicles — one common thread emerges: our escalating connectivity as humans. All these technologies are increasingly melded with our senses as the computing “abstraction layer” diminishes.
In other words, device interfaces continue to get more intuitive and automatic. That can be seen in the progression of personal computing from UI milestones like the mouse to mobile-centric touch controls. Now, we have biometric tracking on the Apple Watch and ambient alerts to AirPods.
The “connected consumer” will be Street Fight’s editorial focus for the month of December.
LBMA Vidcast: PayPal to Acquire Honey; Apple Teams with PlayNetwork
On this week’s Location-Based Marketing Association podcast: Mobivity launching omnichannel offer platform with Subway, Apple teaming with PlayNetwork for retail music, PayPal to acquire Honey for $4B, Tesco’s One Stop launches AR game, JCPenney opening new store with barbershop and styling, and CVS + Weather Channel team-up on AI flu predictions.
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