News and Analysis
Retail Media Players to Watch in 2023
The recent announcement by Lowe’s that it would be taking more of its retail media network in-house this year is only the beginning. Change is happening throughout the industry, as the largest global retailers become media companies in their own right. In the coming year, even more retail brands are expected to turn their existing websites into full-fledged media networks.
Uberall Releases Direct Integration with Apple’s Business Connect
Days after Apple announced the launch of Business Connect, a feature that allows businesses of all sizes to customize the way their information appears across Apple apps, the customer experience platform Uberall has come out with its own integration solution.
Amazon Gets into E-Commerce as a Service
Amazon may be getting into a new service business: e-commerce as a service. The company announced that Buy with Prime, already available to third-party merchants on Amazon, will be available to non-Amazon merchants in the U.S. starting January 31.
Commentary
Customer Engagement Critical for Local Business Survival During Re-Emergence
It has been an especially hard few months for small businesses, many of which will never reopen or will take months – if not years – to recover financially from the shutdowns and reduced patron numbers.
Despite the challenges, there are very real opportunities for sustained growth during this time. To survive and thrive during this next period, local businesses must deepen their customer relationships despite having fewer resources available. While it may sound like a conundrum, this actually presents a significant opportunity to deliver a personalized customer experience and drive loyalty.
Hybrid Events: Preparing for a Digital Future
Hybrid events are becoming more popular due to the world’s current state, the rise of remote working, and because of their appeal to global audiences. But what is this new event format and how can you prepare for it?
We break down this new event form and outline what companies can do to create hybrid events.
How Z-Axis is Set to Level Up Localized Marketing Post-Covid
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.
Latest Posts
5 Visual Marketing Platforms for Brands
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
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
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
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
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.
Consumers Hungry for New Content Discovery Channels on Mobile
The content consumers are craving is personalized and brief. Over 40% said they would like content experiences between 15 and 30 seconds, and another 26% favored engagement somewhere between 30 and 90 seconds. Despite amplified privacy concerns of late, 68% indicated a willingness to trade some personal information in exchange for content tailored to their interests.
Brands still trigger-happy on mobile push notifications may want to reconsider. Twenty-five percent of respondents ranked them as their least liked content delivery method among current and future modes of discovery.
Does Influencer Marketing Have a Transparency Problem?
Although the average share of budgets spent on influencer marketing is just 10%, that figure is growing as visual platforms like Instagram, Snapchat, and Pinterest see explosive growth.
The problem? Brands are often focusing on misleading vanity metrics in an attempt to justify those investments. For example, many marketers track follower counts as a primary indicator for determining brand and influencer partnerships. Growing evidence shows that follower counts do not equate to true impressions or reach data, giving brands a false sense of how their campaigns are performing.
As AI Adoption Accelerates, Brands Search for Competitive Edge
In Gartner’s 2019 CIO Survey, which included more than 3,000 CIOs from 89 countries, AI technology was ranked as the technology most likely to be disruptive. Despite their enthusiasm for AI, CIOs showed a lack of certainty over the best way to implement the technology and get their newest marketing strategies off the ground.
That uncertainty has the potential to negatively impact brands’ bottom lines, and it’s an issue that industry insiders like Cerebri AI co-founder Jean Belanger are working to combat.
At I/O, Google Offers a New Vision for Local Search
The notion of “helping you get things done,” emphasized by Sundar Pichai in his I/O keynote, provides a through-line for many of the event’s announcements. It struck me watching the presentations how thoroughly Google has become a consumer electronics company, a marketer of devices where search is more a central feature than a standalone product. Google, in other words, has become thoroughly dedicated to marketing its famous search capabilities in the context of devices that help you perform daily tasks. In the process, it is transforming local search and how we relate to the world with electronic devices.
LBMA Vidcast: Factual, Walgreens, Burger King
On this week’s Location-Based Marketing Association podcast: Factual partners with Airship & Braze, Class action against all 4 U.S. mobile operators, Decathalon opens first U.S. store, Burger King delivers in Mexico City traffic jams, Para’Kito goes AR with Georgia Pacific, Walgreens teams with Narvar.
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