News and Analysis

Shoppable Ads Poised to Hit CTV

Shoppable Ads Poised to Hit CTV

Shoppable ads are coming to a TV screen near you. Half of online adults recall seeing a shoppable ad on TV, with 70% of those consumers having purchased a featured product either at that time or shortly thereafter, according to consumer research firm Aluma.

SafeGuard Privacy Partners with Third Party to Certify Customers’ Privacy Bona Fides

Now that adtech companies, data providers, brands, and publishers view a data privacy strategy as indispensable, every company in the digital media space seems to have slapped “privacy-safe” onto its website. But how can anyone tell who has really taken the necessary steps to protect consumer privacy?

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.

Commentary

Brand Safety During Rapidly Changing Times

Our country has gone through several critical moments in recent history, navigating our way through a pandemic and undergoing a racial and cultural revolution. We’re seeing support from individuals and organizations large and small, but we’re also starting to see some tone-deaf content or misaligned messages as well. With everything going on, brand marketers need to be present and smart in regard to where their messages go and what they’re saying.

Personalized Marketing is a Must Right Now

Today, marketers have the luxury of being able to see consumers through the entire advertising funnel, enabling them to target consumers based on where they are in the buying process — from introduction of a product all the way to purchase intent. Brands have the ability, either in-house or via third-party vendors, to create and target ads that scale cross-device and cross-channel, reducing repetition, eliminating ad fatigue, and enhancing consumer experience throughout the funnel.

They can, and should, A/B test different messages, offers, and calls to action in real time to determine what resonates with each consumer down to the color of the button that generates more engagement. Marketers can do all of this across programmatic display, video, social, on YouTube and over-the-top (OTT) TV.  So, why aren’t they?

Location Weekly: Apple’s Move to Limit IDFAs

In this episode of Location Weekly, the Location-Based Marketing Association covers Apple’s move to limit IDFAs, Bluedot raising $9.1M, and the Fat Jewish bringing a mobile manicure truck to NYC. The team also hosts Scott McNulty, director of business development for Rio SEO.

Latest Posts

Heard on the Street, Episode 28: Location-Based Survival of the Fittest, With Gimbal

According to Gimbal’s SVP of location platforms Adrian Tompsett, the key to the location business is having a long-term and holistic view of customer value. That means using location intelligence to go beyond just triggering promotions to increase the customers’ basket size, instead using the technology in ways that will provide additional value in the long term.

B2B Video Marketing Grows Up, Getting Briefer and Garnering More Attention

The standards for B2B video marketing are rising as marketers get the hang of the hottest, no longer so new medium. Marketers are learning to keep things short and sweet, decreasing the average video length from six to four minutes from 2017 to 2018, and audiences are tuning in longer, Vidyard reports in its annual video in business report.

Outsourced or In-House Delivery? We Did the Math

Local delivery is rapidly becoming a must-have for all kinds of businesses—people have become accustomed to online ordering and speedy delivery. According to a Go People survey, 65% of retailers will offer same-day delivery by the end of 2019, and according to Technomic, food delivery volume will grow by 12% year-over-year from 2019 to 2023. The question isn’t whether your business should offer delivery, but how.

TRUSTX Takes Aim at Opaque Programmatic Trading Practices

The lack of transparency in the programmatic space has finally reached a tipping point. According to a survey on the state of programmatic media buying, conducted by Digiday, 27% of media buyers say the greatest concern they have with programmatic advertising is the lack of transparency. While many players in the space are claiming that their hands are tied, and agencies continue to push back against audits, upstart technology firms are carving out niches as leaders in the push to bring trust into programmatic advertising.

Tim Cook Demands New Commitment to Responsibility from Big Tech

With the moral and commercial high ground in clear sight, Tim Cook used the spotlight at Stanford University’s commencement ceremony Saturday to slam Big Tech peers Google, Facebook, and Twitter for failing to take responsibility for the hateful content and disinformation on their platforms.

How to Use Facebook’s Simplified Campaign Structure to Your Advantage

It’s a brave new advertising world. The algorithms are taking over, whether human advertising managers like it or not. Our best bet is to understand how the algorithms work and to give them the freedom, the data, the budgets, and the creative assets they need for optimal performance.  The Facebook algorithm will take away budget lever from humans when Campaign Budget Optimization becomes mandatory in September 2019.

LBMA Vidcast: Amazon’s StyleSnap, Coca Cola’s Summer Wrist Bands

On this week’s Location-Based Marketing Association podcast: Wrangler Jeans + Old Town Road, The North Face + Spotify, SingleCut Beersmiths plays trivia, Amazon’s StyleSnap, Coca-Cola’s summer wrist bands, ProYo + InMarket. Special: 2019 LBMA Global Location Trends Report.

Marketers Prepare for Father’s Day Boom

With just two days to go before the big day, brand marketers would be smart to ramp up their campaigns now. Researchers at the digital advertising platform ZypMedia discovered that shoppers purchasing gifts for Father’s Day don’t plan nearly as far in advance as they do for Christmas and other major holidays. As a result, last-minute campaigns targeting shoppers are much more likely to have a major impact.

Fostering Brand-Customer Relationships in the Age of Social Checkout and Chatbots

Currently, 74% of consumers visit the social media pages of brands to inspire future purchases. And as evidenced by the popularity of Instagram Checkout, sales tools like Apple Business Chat, and new ad products like Google‘s Shoppable Ads, the industry is rapidly moving towards commerce that removes the friction between inspiration and an actual purchase.

But when the path to purchase is shortened, so is the opportunity for brand and customer to interact, which is probably what attracted your customers in the first place. Especially in the world of social media, brand persona is an enduring element that differentiates your brand and creates fans out of customers.

The good news is, you don’t have to sacrifice brand voice for a social commerce strategy. In fact, with the right tools, you can enhance it.

David Shim, Foursquare

After Foursquare Acquisition, Placed Founder David Shim Talks Teaming Up With a Major Competitor

How did a Seattle-based ad tech company move up the ranks to become an industry darling, less than eight years after its launch? And how does the new relationship between Foursquare and Placed, which was previously the biggest competitor to the company’s Foursquare Attribution product, impact the location industry at large?

To find out, we caught up with Placed founder and CEO—and now president of Foursquare—David Shim. Here are his thoughts on what it’s like to go through an acquisition, and how two industry heavyweights who’ve competed for years are finding new ways to work together.