News and Analysis
Apple Launches Business Connect to Give Businesses More Control of Local Presence
Apple this week announced the launch of Business Connect, a new feature that allows businesses of all sizes to control how they appear to Apple Maps users. The move comes as consumers increasingly use maps apps to discover local businesses, whether by browsing an area or searching for a specific kind of business near them.
5 Retail Communications Platforms for Multi-Location Brands
If there is one thread that runs through nearly all the challenges retailers are facing in 2023, it’s communication. Using the right enterprise communication platforms, retail brands have an opportunity to reduce staffing woes, improve customer retention, and even minimize ongoing supply chain issues.
Commentary
Leveraging Cannabis Consumer Data is the Key to Mainstream Acceptance
Thanks to the industry’s meteoric growth and coronavirus-era essential status in many states, cannabis consumers have emerged as one of the most coveted marketing segments, driving even more engagement in data collection and presentation. A rising tide lifts all boats – and data is a powerful tide that can help raise the industry to mainstream acceptance.
Data may be the ticket to legalization, too, if leveraged in a way that considers how this lucrative information can be used by mainstream companies. As cannabis data begins to resemble data from other industries, it is our responsibility as industry leaders to collectively leverage this data and allow legal cannabis to flourish and emerge as a truly established industry.
Location Weekly: Burberry and Tencent Partner for World’s First Social Media-Infused Store
In this episode of Location Weekly, the Location-Based Marketing Association covers Burberry teaming with Tencent for the world’s first social store, Voxel51 helping to keep stores healthy, Popeyes helping people to “autocorrect” their dinner plans, Foodpanda using traffic and weather data in a DOOH programmatic campaign, and Tapad and Reveal Mobile partnering to launch new audience and attribution capabilities for ad buyers.
Tracing, Tracking, and Trust: Why Tech Is on the Sidelines in Contact Tracing
Mainly, multiple instances of data breaches committed by governments, corporations, platforms, and even data warehouses have eroded the trust citizens have when forking over sensitive and personal information. The resistance only increases as a result of Americans’ strong resistance to being told what to do, which manifested in widespread protests against mandatory quarantine restrictions in several states.
How can this resistance be overcome? Companies and government organizations asking for personal information must build trust from the very beginning. High rates of consent require clear information to users about exactly what data citizens will share and how this data will be used and protected.
Latest Posts
How the Newest 5 Features from Google will Change the Role of UA Managers
Facebook and Google still haven’t figured out how to automate creative. They can’t really even automate creative testing yet. So, take all the time you used to spend with bids and budgets and media buying and shift it to creative. Odds are, you aren’t spending even 2-3 hours a week monitoring and analyzing your competitors’ ads. Shift from bid edits and go do that. Or even better, spend 4-8 hours a week monitoring and analyzing competitor’s ads, and even ads from outside your industry. This research can result in blockbuster new creative concepts — the type of 100x ads that rocket ROAS.
4 Major Takeaways About Consumer Privacy Concerns
Location data firm Factual commissioned a study conducted by the University of Southern California applied psychology master’s program to take the pulse of consumers on data privacy. Unsurprisingly, not all consumers demographic groups share the same levels and types of concern. Here are four major takeaways from the survey of 1,002 smartphone users aged 18 to 65.
Immersive Tech’s Next Conquest: Your Car
The real opportunity in VR and connected cars, going back to our primary focus on local commerce, could be to utilize that captive in-car media time with local discovery tools. Ad-supported experiences could be geo-targeted based on where you are or where you’re going. Destination-based discovery tools could be baked in.
By Unlocking Vehicle Data, Car Rental Companies Help Build Smarter Cities
As operator of three of the most recognized brands in the industry — Avis, Budget and Zipcar — Avis Budget Group represents a mobility ecosystem of more than 11,000 locations in approximately 180 countries. The company recently partnered with the connected-car data firm Otonomo to manage its connected cars on Otonomo’s automotive data services platform. Otonomo will help ABG derive insights from its large connected vehicle fleet, including anonymizing, standardizing, and delivering data from Toyota, Ford, Peugeot and GM vehicles.
The deal between ABG and Otonomo is expected to generate more than 4 billion road miles of data this year, and 7 billion road miles of data by 2020, with much of that data being used for predictive maintenance, smart city planning, and streamlining of the rental process.
Facebook Emerges as Key Tool for Reputation Management
For franchise businesses, specifically, Facebook is critical. The platform has rolled out a significant number of enhancements to help companies manage all facets of their digital reputation. And in the last year, nothing has been quite so impactful to franchise businesses as the rollout of Locations – the company’s local pages feature, which enables a multi-location business to link, and manage, individual franchise pages to the corporate brand page.
In order to leverage the network as a true reputation management tool, franchise brands must get accustomed to the three features outlined in this piece, which can be used to enhance the online reputation of every location and control public perception of your overall brand.
How Technology Companies Can Establish and Benefit from a User-First Culture
As more and more states pass separate privacy regulations into law, we will likely see an increase of noncompliance and fines across the board. Subsequently, we might see more companies begin advocating for the US to develop its own version of GDPR at the federal level in an effort to simplify compliance for companies nationwide.
To stay ahead of the imminent data privacy regulations, companies need to establish a culture of transparency and compliance. Consumers will be more confident in businesses that offer a clear value exchange when asked to share their data, and marketers and publishers will build stronger relationships with users.
5 Business Models for On-Demand Delivery
In the on-demand food delivery vertical alone, revenue is expected to reach $94 billion this year. Other verticals, like beauty, parking, health, shipping, and marijuana, are seeing significant gains, as well. Although the space is maturing, investors are still seeing great growth opportunities. Any number of on-demand delivery startups has the potential to take over the space if it continues to grow as its current pace.
To understand where that growth might occur, we need to take a step back and examine which business models are proving most successful in the on-demand delivery space and how startups are implementing those business models for financial gain.
How Retailers Are Reaching Back-to-School Shoppers
It’s that time of the year. As summertime comes to an end, parents around the country have started filling up shopping carts with pencils, notebooks, and binders. Families in the U.S. are expected to spend an average of $696 on back-to-school supplies this year, the highest amount ever recorded by the National Retail Federation.
Back-to-school shopping has become an important event for retailers like Target, Walmart, and Office Depot. While ecommerce is king at other times of the year, parents shopping for their kids’ back-to-school supplies are just as likely to shop in-store as they are online.
LBMA Vidcast: Google Launches Location Groups, Bumble Explores Physical Space
On this week’s Location-Based Marketing Association podcast: PatientPoint’s proximity in healthcare, Boen Wines using NFC with Guala Closures, Bumble gets into physical space, Puma geotargets on Firefly’s DOOH, Google launches “seasonality” and “location groups”, Groupon acquires Presence AI for voice & text.
How FlashParking Is Turning Isolated Lots Into Connected Hubs
The parking technology company FlashParking wants to reimagine the way parking lots are managed. But rather than pushing “smart” technology on individual operators, the company is taking a decidedly different approach to decreasing traffic congestion in cities.
Operating under the belief that most technology solutions to urban challenges are unnecessarily complicated, the team at FlashParking is working toward solutions that redirect energy away from smart-city technology. Instead, FlashParking is pushing a system that embraces so-called “dumb cities” — cities planned and built with durable approaches to infrastructure.
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