News and Analysis

5 Cloud-Based Platforms for Optimizing Retail Returns

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Returns are soaring along with e-commerce transactions. Here are five return management and pick-up services designed for retail businesses.

What’s Old Is New Again: Marketers Adopt Marketing Mix Modeling

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As signal loss complicates granular measurement frameworks like multi-touch attribution, marketers are reconsidering more holistic techniques like marketing mix modeling, or MMM. 

customer experience retail

Report: BOPIS Use Soars While Demand for Curbside Pickup Declines

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More than half of retailers (54%) are now offering BOPIS (buy-online, pick-up in-store) services, but just 31% are showing store inventory availability online. One third of retail brands have a mobile app, and an impressive 76% are accepting contactless payments in-store. 

Commentary

How Z-Axis is Set to Level Up Localized Marketing Post-Covid

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The margin for error is thin and every dollar counts. Accuracy and precision are top of mind, as advertisers continue to long for reliable data to make the most strategic decisions in their advertising spending, especially in the digital space.

Advertising technology and localized marketing platforms built their business on the use of GPS signals to provide real-world KPIs like foot traffic attribution, allowing businesses large and small to go beyond the click to reach and engage more precise audiences. And while this technology has certainly improved from its early days, it can only go so far without the introduction of another dimension: z-axis.

How to Solve the Franchise PPC Cannibalization Problem

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Working with dozens of franchise brands, it’s been interesting to see how digital teams have structured their national pay-per-click (PPC) programs. Actually, maybe “interesting” isn’t the right word. It’s more so concerning. Many are so narrowly focused only on their national campaigns, they’re aloof when it comes to the local campaigns their franchisees are running. If corporate marketing teams are running digital campaigns on behalf of local franchises, they’re likely not set up and optimized in such a way where they’re being given enough TLC to drive meaningful results at the local level. While some brands get it right, many others have failed miserably. 

The ideal scenario is executing local store PPC correctly alongside and in cooperation with national programs and gleaning insights from the data on one program to benefit the other in a symbiotic fashion.

App-ads.txt is an Anti-Fraud Tool, but for Publishers, it’s Really About Revenue

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The IAB hasn’t mandated the adoption of app-ads.txt. In other words, it’s still the Wild West out there when it comes to fraud. But even the publishers that have done the right thing by adopting app-ads.txt have gotten the wrong message about the tool because it’s been presented entirely as a compliance matter. As a result, many mobile publishers treat app-ads.txt as a perfunctory anti-fraud measure that they can “set and forget.”

Latest Posts

To Understand the Tech Industry’s Responsibilities, We Must Think Differently About Humanity

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These questions would be preludes to less abstract ones that will seem more familiar to the creatures of Silicon Valley. Is Facebook responsible if people use WhatsApp and Messenger to spread false news and incite genocide? Is that just the fault of (heinous) people being (heinous) people or should the platforms be held accountable? As for privacy and data collection, what rights do people have to safeguard their information from the communications platforms they use? What does data scraped from Google search or Amazon’s facial recognition technology have to do with our identities? Can data be human?

Google Integrates Food Delivery into Search, Maps, Assistant

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More or less following the model of Reserve with Google, which has seamlessly integrated the process of reserving a table at a nearby restaurant into SERPs, Google is now integrating food delivery into search, Maps, and Assistant, keeping consumers on Google properties for the entire journey as they make transactions via third-party couriers.

LBMA Vidcast: Macy’s & Pinterest; PlaceIQ, PMG, and Old Navy

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On this week’s Location-Based Marketing Association podcast: Trial Run Media’s ABIE, Cheek-It’s scavenger hunt, JCDeacaux + Location Sciences, Macy’s launches OUT[FITS] with Pinterest, PlaceIQ partners with PMG on Old Navy, Admetrix + Locomizer.  Research: S4M & LBMA contrast GDPR vs. CCPA

How to Survive the Coming Data Privacy Tsunami

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Just as we have gotten used to the idea that the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a fact of life and have made modifications in our data collection procedures, the Brazil General Data Protection Law (LGDP), the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), and waves of proposed new data privacy laws are swirling in the calm preceding a privacy tsunami heading our way. All these privacy regulations share a number of commonalities, and by addressing them now, you will be on high ground as the waves begin to pound.

As GDPR’s One-Year Anniversary Approaches, Where Are We Now?

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One year in, it’s clear that the full impact of GDPR still hasn’t been felt. The regulation is structured in a way that puts less pressure on large companies than smaller businesses, and that’s something that regulators will have to continue sorting out. But the changes Europe’s law portends are undeniable: Privacy legislation is coming to the United States, and the data collection practices that made many Silicon Valley pioneers rich will never be quite so unbridled again.

5 Visual Marketing Platforms for Brands

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Amazon, Alibaba, and eBay are just a few online retailers with new visual search tools, and social media platforms like Snapchat are letting users take pictures of items to buy on Amazon and Pinterest. By using enterprise-level visual marketing platforms, brands can capitalize on their visibility across the web and drive more revenue from the images and other content their customers are creating.

Here are five visual marketing platforms that brands are using right now.

Omnichannel or Multichannel? Which One And Why

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Omnichannel creates a smarter shopping experience that benefits both consumers and brands. Data is shared across all channels, enabling stronger engagement and moving the consumer toward a purchase. For the customer, it creates an easier shopping experience and a stronger brand connection.

Lessons to Draw from How DTC Disruptor Brands Market Themselves

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DTC brands are emerging across dozens of categories. Early and best-known examples of DTC brands include Casper, Brooklinen, Warby Parker, and Tesla. Most DTC brands not only bypass the typical retail sales and distribution model but also act in other nontraditional ways. This has earned them a label as disruptors.

Advertising intelligence and sales enablement platform MediaRadar took a close look at DTC brand trends to find what’s fueling DTC advertising and to gain an understanding of how DTC companies make ad buying decisions. MediaRadar surveyed our own DTC clients and analyzed our data for deeper insights.

Heard on the Street, Episode 26: The Art of Digital Persuasion, with Jeff Hasen

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Amid accelerated disruption in digital media, consumer touch points continue to fragment. That includes a growing list of interfaces and delivery channels for content—everything from smartphones to watches to headphones and speakers. So what’s a marketer to do?

This is the topic of Jeff Hasen’s third and most recent book, The Art of Digital Persuasion, which we discuss with the author on the latest episode of the Heard on the Street Podcast. In addition to lots of marketing tactics, Hasen has also learned a lot in a career that includes work as both a journalist and an ad agency exec.

Consumer Dollars Are Up for Grabs—If Retailers Can Master the Basics

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To maintain the business of today’s consumers, consistency is key. Just under 70% of respondents said they’re less likely to return to a store after just one subpar experience. As for what earns a shopper’s approval, only 19% of consumers said they seek out food or entertainment from stores. More important are fundamental technical capabilities like mobile app integration and access to WiFi. Two thirds of shoppers even said retailers are too focused on experimental tech and should pay more attention to the building blocks of good retail strategy.