News and Analysis
Why Social Media Giants Are Embracing Conversational AI
Generative and conversational AI seem to be taking over the world. The former entails generating images and text with keyword inputs… with results that are sometimes impressive, sometimes funny, and sometimes creepy. And the latter is all about AI-generated dialogues… with similar results.
5 Platforms Using Artificial Intelligence to Generate Ad Creative
Startups like Omneky, Creatopy, and Luna have been integrating AI technology into their ad creation platforms for years. With OpenAI’s ChatGPT hitting the mainstream, more brand advertisers are seeking out generative AI solutions to make their own campaigns more effective and scalable. Here are five companies to watch.
Top 7 Digital Marketing Trends for Agencies
To keep up, agencies need to take initiative as soon as a marketing trend begins. This not only helps your clients stand out in their markets, but it also helps you become a leading agency in your own right. Here are the top digital marketing trends for agencies that you should jump on quickly in 2023.
Commentary
How Brands Meet Evolving Customer Expectations with Creative Automation
What customers want from brands is transparency, product information, and available services. Tell audiences about new curbside pickup or what you’re doing to make deliveries safer. Think of how you are removing friction and easing customers’ worry and then speak about it, because not only are they listening, but they’re also paying attention to those who haven’t gotten it right.
Aside from finding the right story angle for customers, many marketing and in-house creative teams are struggling to produce enough new assets and push them quickly out the door, especially as they adjust to remote work. Here are some of the most common challenges brand-side creative teams face during these times and how creative automation can help overcome them.
Location Weekly: DoorDash Opening DashMart Stores
In this episode of Location Weekly, the Location-Based Marketing Association covers Verizon deploying 2cm precision location tracking, DoorDash opening DashMart stores, and Google launching earthquake detection on Android devices. Rich Ventura of Sony Electronics joins as a guest.
Snapchat’s “Promote Local Place”: The Deeper Dive
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.
Latest Posts
LBMA Vidcast: InMarket Acquires ThinkNear, Google Assistant Upgrade
On this week’s Location-Based Marketing Association podcast: InMarket acquires Thinknear, Google Assistant lets you send reminders to others, Kraken Rum’s dining experience in London, Wirecard launches app in North America, Nike buys Celect for data science, Infiniti teams up with JCDecaux in Russia.
Back-to-School Retailing Is Now All About Using Mobile Data to Help Your Customers
Back to School (BTS) is a $53 billion shopping season that’s entering its final stage as parents and college students take care of school supplies and clothing needs before Labor Day. And as we close out this decade and look to the 2020s, the combination of mobile technology, hyperlocal commerce, and consumer expectations make this a fascinating juncture in BTS history.
Fortunately, these complex market scenarios represent more of a golden opportunity than a paradox due to the promise of mobile. Here are two reasons why national and local brands should leverage data to bridge the online-offline gap and improve their BTS sales.
Waymo Releases Data Set to Catalyze Autonomous Driving Research
Why should local search specialists care about autonomous vehicles? The same way mobile, with its natural on-the-go use cases, has become the hub of “near me” searches that lead consumers into local businesses, cars will become the next mobile device, catalyzing the next wave of “near me” queries. Self-driving cars are not tangential to the future of local; they are central to it.
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.
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