News and Analysis
Consumer Expectations Meet Marketing Reality in the Metaverse
Meta shareholders have had it with the metaverse. When Mark Zuckerberg renewed his commitment to the project in an earnings call last week, Meta shares plunged 25%. For consumers, it’s a different story.
Holiday E-Commerce: Google Focuses on Value
With inflation high, markets struggling, and marketers widely doubling down on value, Google joined the trend, updating Shopping to emphasize deals and promotions.
How to Leverage Mobility Data to Bring Consumers Back In-Store
Rising inflation is changing the way consumers shop and decreasing the number of trips people make to brick-and-mortar stores. While the change in behavior could be a stumbling block for some specialty retailers, it’s also providing brands with an opportunity to more effectively leverage mobility data to target consumers in ways that weren’t possible prior to the pandemic.
Commentary
Social Distancing and Gen-Z
Social distancing and self-quarantining have changed the world in a matter of weeks. How is Gen-Z responding? They are flocking to apps like TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat to pass time and interact with family and friends. Facebook and WhatsApp have lost their reign over the competition during lockdown.
To get a better understanding of Gen-Zers’ habits, routine, and lives during the pandemic, Brainly, the world’s largest peer-to-peer learning community, surveyed over 1,700 of them.
The Affiliate Maturity Curve: Graduating from Banners to Lifetime Value
Let’s face it: Affiliate marketing gets a bad wrap. Once considered a channel fraught with black-hat players, fraud, weak strategy, and an overall lack of transparency, affiliate marketing suffered from a reputation for opacity that did not imbue confidence and trust in partners. Most importantly, there wasn’t a sufficient level of confidence that the channel could deliver desired results and outcomes.
The reality is that the last-click-only perception of affiliate marketing is a thing of yesteryear. Looking back, coupon and loyalty dominated the category because of this reliance on the last-click model embraced by brands. That model stymied the channel’s advancement and progression. However, affiliate is no longer relegated to rudimentary tactics like banner advertising on coupon sites.
The Cookie’s Collapse is No More Consequential than the Shift to Mobile
The cookie is on its last days, enjoying an extended farewell tour, thanks to Google’s decision to view third-party cookies as obsolete within Chrome by 2022. While many have painted the cookie’s waning days as the potential end of digital advertising, the truth is that this move is really no more consequential than the gradual shift from the desktop web to the mobile device.
Similar to the shift to mobile, the loss of the cookie will change the way that digital media is bought and sold and the way that many companies approach third-party data. It will likely put several companies out of business if they fail to adapt. But this change will merely be a paradigm shift — one that is long overdue — and not the nuclear fallout that many are expecting.
Latest Posts
Heard on the Street, Episode 20: Local Reviews Tactics from a Travel Giant
Even in a hyper technology-driven world, one of the most influential forms of local marketing remains word of mouth. But of course that universal principle has taken on new digital formats, including social influence and good-old local business reviews. Reviews optimization is the name of today’s game. We spoke to TripAdvisor Restaurant Division Lead Mark Goloboy on the latest episode of Street Fight’s Heard on the Street podcast to find out how his company is innovating in reputation and identify best practices for businesses.
How Mobile and OOH Can Defy a Dip in Traffic to Coffee Shops During the Otherwise Hot Winter Season
With AAA reporting that 91% of the 112.5 million people in the US who travel during the holiday season take a road trip during that time span, it’s intuitive to dovetail mobile creative with digital out-of-home creative, targeting all these travelers who are undoubtedly moving about the country … and outside their usual stop-for-coffee routines. Below are some strategies to bear in mind when trying to reel in the customer at year’s end.
Want to Know How Long the Wait For that Hot New Restaurant Is? There’s a Google Integration for That
Building on the Reserve with Google offerings that have made the tech giant’s SERPs the new homepage of local businesses, Google seems to be adding a feature that allows people searching for local restaurants to sign up for a waitlist. Busy folks with a penchant for busy eateries rejoice.
How 5 Retail Brands Are Maximizing the Power of User-Generated Content
Photos and videos that shoppers post on social media convey sentiment about brands, giving fellow consumers—and brands themselves—an uncensored look at how people really feel about their products and services. How brands harness this feedback is evolving, as brand marketers find new ways to glean insights from the unstructured consumer feedback being posted on social media and elsewhere online. Here are five examples of brands that are engaging shoppers across social channels and taking full advantage of the content that customers post on their own online accounts.
Google Posts: Less Visible but Still Valuable
Mihm to Blumenthal: Google has been making a serious effort to get more business owners more engaged with Google My Business over the past 12-18 months. The irony is, though, that deprecating the success business owners can see from easy, compelling offerings like Posts makes them less likely to remain engaged. It’s a little bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy. That said, and despite my initial skepticism about Posts, I have become a long-term believer.
How to Craft a Successful Content Marketing Strategy
Andrew Witkin: One of the main reasons businesses miss the mark with content marketing is that the goals and execution of effective content marketing are at odds with those of traditional marketing methods. While traditional marketing principles dictate that products and services should be the main focus of any advertising initiative, a successful content marketing strategy views a company’s products and services as secondary or supplemental to providing the audience with information that is useful to them and interesting to read or view.
LBMA Vidcast: Toyota & GroundTruth, GOAT Sneakers AR Campaign
On this week’s Location-Based Marketing Association podcast: GOAT Sneakers AR campaign, Swatch goes contactless, BevMo tests voice, Solving homelessness in London with ClearChannel, Nextdoor monetizes data, Toyota dealers + GroundTruth.
New Hires at Kobie, AppNexus, Rewards Network
Every two weeks, our jobs columnist Geoff Michener provides a roundup of the latest hires in the digital marketing and media ecosystems. This week’s edition also includes new hires at Digital Ocean and Acceleration Partners.
How Mom-and-Pop Shops Can Attract Customers Year Long, Not Just on Small Business Saturday
Dan Silver: Why should small businesses be limited to one great day of sales a year? Now more than ever, owners have an arsenal of tools at their disposal to help them drive more visits and generate revenue. Here are a few sustainable solutions for local businesses.
Shirking the Tech Giants’ Mobile Wallets, Kroger Unveils One of Its Own
Kroger is flexing on Apple and Google this week, passing on the opportunity to accept Apple Pay or Google Pay at its stores and choosing instead to launch its own mobile wallet that doubles as a loyalty card, WCPO reported in Columbus.
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Meta Is Automating Ads, But Brands Still Face a Bigger Problem