News and Analysis

Travel Brands Play Catch-Up as Consumers Seek Mobile Capabilities

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As consumers grow more comfortable using mobile tools for communication and commerce, the disconnect between what travel brands are offering and what travelers are seeking is growing wider.

Halloween Season Amplifies Consumers’ Impulse to Buy

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The cost of Halloween sweets will rise 34% compared to last year, according to data from PayPal, but that isn’t stopping retailers and brands from doing what they can to influence which products consumers purchase.

Pro Soccer Club Uses Fan Experience Data to Improve Engagement 

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The Oakland Roots Soccer Club is working with UserTesting to collect real-time insights from fans and develop more engaging digital experiences.

Commentary

Location Weekly: GroundTruth and Yext Partner, Facebook Unveils Shops

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In this episode of Location Weekly, the Location-Based Marketing Association hosts Mike Peters, CMO, Optimizers, and Head of LBMA Sweden.

The team also covers GroundTruth and Yext announcing a new partnership, Reveal mobile releasing a free version of its Visit Local platform, and Facebook Shops launching in the U.S.

Location Data Companies Rise to the Challenge of Covid-19

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The location data market has responded to many external pressures in recent years. Guided by new privacy regulations such as GDPR and CCPA as well as operating system updates by Apple and Android, the industry has put the consumer back at the center. The old days of capturing data and selling to ad tech firms without permission are over.

These shifts are good news for society. But they are also good news for the location industry, which has pivoted to thrive in this new world where squeezed supply impacts the quality of location data.

Now, Covid-19 has presented a new challenge, with movement data restricted to unprecedented levels. So, how are location data companies responding to the crisis?

Essential Business Foot Traffic: U.S. Grocery Store Trends

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This article takes an up-close look at foot traffic to what may be the most critical of essential businesses: grocery stores. 

Grocery stores are crucial during the quarantine and will remain so as areas of the retail economy reopen and as we enter into a recovery period. According to the National Grocers Association, grocers are especially adept at making and executing contingency plans in the event a disaster strikes. This involves coordination with myriad producers, distributors, and wholesalers throughout the supply chain. It is no small task keeping eggs, milk, butter, and bread in stock and on the shelves of your local supermarket.

Latest Posts

Location Is an Underused Data Layer for Brands Seeking Better ROI

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In 2019, we are just scratching the surface of location data’s potential for improving the ROI of advertising and marketing. As we approach the next decade, location intelligence will be a major factor in determining which brands thrive and exist in the many years to come and which ones fall by the wayside by not taking their data seriously enough.

The DOOH Opportunity: How OOH is Becoming a Bigger Piece of the Media Mix Pie

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Out-of-Home (OOH) advertising is having a fantastic run. It is the only traditional media channel to consistently grow over the last 10 years and is expected to continue growing in 2019, according to the Outdoor Advertising Association of America.

However, OOH teams are often siloed away from broader digital marketing teams and are categorized differently in budget breakdowns and post-campaign analysis. As the field adapts and evolves, continued separation of digital and OOH teams is going to hinder, rather than help, your efforts and results.

LBMA Vidcast: Alibaba’s FlyZoo Hotel, McDonald’s Acquisition of Dynamic Yield

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On this week’s Location-Based Marketing Association podcast: Samsung’s “Refrigerdating,” PrivateAcre, Alibaba’s FlyZoo hotel, McDonald’s buys DynamicYield, Oreo + Target, Coor’s Light battles Bud with sound. Special guest: Ian Dallimore, Lamar.

SMB Marketers: Small Budget? Small Team? Search and Social Are Key

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With the barrier to entry lower than ever, third-party platforms have made inroads to make it easier for marketers to leverage search and social more effectively. These platforms have made it attainable for marketers—regardless of their team size or level of experience—to launch and optimize sophisticated, targeted campaigns, providing an ideal foundation to build upon as their capabilities and budgets expand. With that, here are five reasons SMB marketers should consider digging deeper into search and social right now.

Another Day, Another Story About Exposed Facebook User Data

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While we don’t yet know if any nefarious activity took place as a result of this latest news of Facebook user information’s exposure to third parties, the bottom line, as per the pithy genie line above, is that Facebook handled user data so recklessly for so long that there’s no guarantee the company can prevent exposure going forward. That means, potential regulations for which Mark Zuckerberg is now calling notwithstanding, the end of the Facebook privacy-breach saga is likely not in sight.

food

Walmart Enlists Google to Power Voice-Driven Grocery Shopping

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Partnerships between retailers and tech platforms will provide increasingly important benefits for local discovery as voice becomes a more established search channel. In the age of voice-driven local search, consumers looking for products and services will become accustomed to having only one option surfaced (as Assistant is unlikely to rattle off five choices), which means being a consumer’s first option will be paramount for brick-and-mortars.

online privacy

Interactive Advertising Bureau Europe Catches Heat from Privacy Advocates

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Johnny Ryan, chief policy and industry officer at Brave, a privacy-first web browser, filed a complaint with the Irish Data Commission against Interactive Advertising Bureau Europe on Tuesday evening based on the latter’s alleged violation of GDPR. A statement circulated by Brave on Tuesday identified IAB Europe as a leading lobbyist for the digital tracking industry and accused the company of violating GDPR guidelines with its “cookie wall,” a message encountered by those navigating to its website that requires visitors to consent to tracking from both IAB Europe and third parties.

Report: Education of SMB Marketers a Glaring Hole in Vendor Approaches

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The disconnect between how vendors think they are supporting and educating their clients, and how those clients actually feel they are being supported, can be alarming. BrandMuscle’s report found that local marketers are hungry for marketing knowledge, and yet 18% believe they get “little to no support” from the agencies or marketing teams with which they work. Twenty-eight percent say they get “check-the-box support,” which is still insufficient.

Letter From the Editor: Broadening “Local”

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Street Fight’s charter for the past nine years has been to chronicle the happenings of, and pull strategic insights from, the world of location-based media and marketing. But this impactful area that we’ve all come to know as simply “local” continues to evolve and expand.

This sparks an ongoing question we ask ourselves: What is “local?” The answer to that question is different depending on whom you ask. To some, it might mean how restaurant ingredients are sourced. To those in the local advertising industry, it might mean “SMB,” and to others, it could mean how ads are targeted. The answer is that all of the above are correct.

April Focus: Automating Local

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We’ve kicked off 2019 with themed content for January (Beyond the Screen), February (Word of Mouth), and March (Targeting Location). We now roll into April with Automating Local: a look at how AI is impacting local commerce and marketing. How is it empowering local marketers, and who’s doing what? How are sub-sectors like “retail-as-a-service” bringing AI into retail to transform shopping experiences and empower retailers with new functionality and customer data?