News and Analysis
Yelp Moves Voice AI From Conversation to Conversion
Yelp and Hatch are among the first platforms integrating OpenAI’s GPT-Live-1, giving restaurant and service-business callers more natural conversations with AI. The resulting voice AI is connecting conversational models with the location data, business rules and operating systems required to turn a call into a booking. Voice AI is getting better at sounding human. OpenAI’s […]
The Shopping Mall Is Becoming a Media Platform
The shopping mall has spent years evolving beyond a collection of stores. Dining, entertainment, events and other experiences have increasingly turned major shopping centers into places designed to give consumers more reasons to visit and stay. Now that evolution is moving into advertising. Simon Property Group has launched Simon Media Network, a commerce media platform […]
Ace Hardware Makes Retail Media More Local
Ace Hardware is expanding its retail media network around weather, store proximity, customer intent, and local inventory. Ace’s approach is showing how physical context can give retailers an advantage that audience targeting alone cannot. Retail media networks have generally been built around first-party customer data and proximity to a transaction. Ace Hardware is adding the […]
Commentary
The Marketing Funnel Isn’t Evolving. It’s Dead.
What if one of the biggest line items in your marketing budget is funding a strategy that’s already dead? AI is rewriting how customers are discovered, targeted, and converted, leaving the traditional marketing funnel behind. Most franchise brands are still budgeting for a customer journey that stopped existing years ago. For decades, performance marketing ran […]
AI Agents Making Conversational GBP Management Possible
Managing a single Google Business Profile well takes consistent effort. Managing dozens or hundreds of them well has traditionally taken a team, a lot of hours, and a tolerance for repetitive work that rarely gets easier or less time-consuming, no matter how much practice you put in. For multi-location businesses and the agencies that manage […]
The Strongest Brands Don’t Copy Their Competitors
In crowded markets, it’s tempting to follow the strategies, messaging, and tactics of fast-growing competitors. But as AI increasingly influences how brands are discovered and recommended, sustainable growth belongs to organizations with a distinctive market position, clear differentiation, and expertise that competitors can’t easily replicate. Copycats may grow, but they rarely lead. When another brand […]
Latest Posts
How CKE Is Scaling Local Marketing
CKE Restaurants is building a more centralized local marketing infrastructure across Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s while moving parts of its marketing closer to individual regions and locations. For multi-location brands, the strategy shows how automation can make enterprise scale and local relevance increasingly complementary. For a restaurant company operating thousands of locations, the local marketing […]
Scorpion Pushes MULO Advertising Earlier in the Journey
Scorpion is expanding its Google Ads offering with Demand Gen, giving multi-location brands another way to reach consumers before they actively search for a nearby service provider. Paid search has long been a cornerstone of local customer acquisition. A consumer searches for a nearby home-services provider, attorney, pest-control company, or other service, and brands compete […]
Arrivalist, Digital Remedy Push Attribution Toward Real-World Spend
Digital Remedy and Arrivalist are connecting media exposure with GPS-verified visitation and consumer spending, giving travel marketers a clearer view of what happens after an ad is served. Clicks, impressions, and website visits can tell marketers whether advertising generated digital activity, but they are considerably less useful for answering the question that matters to businesses […]
How MULOs Can Win Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) at Scale
Managing local SEO across dozens or hundreds of locations was already a heavy lift before generative AI entered the picture. Keeping Google Business Profiles current, review volume steady, and NAP data consistent across a large brand footprint takes real infrastructure, not to mention time. Generative AI search experiences have added more weight on top of […]
Independent Agencies Get a New Buying-Power Benchmark
Agency scale has traditionally been associated with greater media buying leverage. A new partnership between Guideline and Tinuiti is putting that independent agencies assumption to the test, using verified market intelligence to compare negotiated media costs against broader benchmarks. For brands evaluating media agencies, buying power has long been one of the arguments favoring the […]
OAAA Heatstroke Campaign Shows OOH’s Local Power
A national heatstroke-prevention campaign from OAAA and the Ad Council shows how OOH (out-of-home) can combine broad reach with geographic concentration and contextual relevance. Summer may be winding down, but a national campaign warning drivers about the dangers of leaving children unattended in vehicles is designed to remain visible well beyond the hottest months of […]
Yelp Moves Local Discovery Closer to Conversion in ChatGPT
AI-powered local discovery is moving beyond the recommendation and closer to the transaction. Yelp’s expanded integration with ChatGPT brings new capabilities into the conversational experience, potentially shortening the path between discovering a location and becoming a customer. For multi-location brands, appearing in an AI recommendation is quickly becoming only part of the challenge. The next […]
The Marketing Funnel Isn’t Evolving. It’s Dead.
What if one of the biggest line items in your marketing budget is funding a strategy that’s already dead? AI is rewriting how customers are discovered, targeted, and converted, leaving the traditional marketing funnel behind. Most franchise brands are still budgeting for a customer journey that stopped existing years ago. For decades, performance marketing ran […]
SOCi Links Restaurant Growth to AI Visibility
Restaurant expansion and contraction are often explained by consumer demand, labor costs, menu innovation, or access to capital. New research from SOCi suggests another metric deserves attention: local AI visibility. Analyzing eight restaurant chains expanding in 2026 alongside eight brands reducing their footprints, SOCi found a consistent performance gap across every major local discovery channel. […]
AI Agents Making Conversational GBP Management Possible
Managing a single Google Business Profile well takes consistent effort. Managing dozens or hundreds of them well has traditionally taken a team, a lot of hours, and a tolerance for repetitive work that rarely gets easier or less time-consuming, no matter how much practice you put in. For multi-location businesses and the agencies that manage […]
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