News and Analysis

Why Brands and Retailers Should Upgrade the Post-Purchase Experience

Most sellers focus on what it takes to get a shopper to make a purchase. Fewer have dedicated ample resources to determining how to ensure satisfaction after the fact.

New Hires at GroundTruth, Mobivity, Uberall, and Choozle

The Street Fight new hires roundup features movers and shakers in adtech, martech, e-commerce, localized marketing, location intelligence, and more. This month’s roundup features new hires at GroundTruth, Mobivity, Uberall, and Choozle.

Tools to Address Labor Shortages

How Retailers are Using AI to Create Dynamic Return Policies

Return policies that are frictionless, transparent, and consumer-friendly have been shown to lead to dramatic increases in profitability and brand loyalty, but bridging the gap between online and offline product returns has been a longstanding challenge for multi-location retailers.

Commentary

An Overlooked Audience for Digital Marketers: E-Sports Fans

The most obvious way to date to engage with e-sports audiences has been through sponsorships. In a move that took the advertising world by surprise, Louis Vuitton (LVMH) partnered with Riot Games to sponsor the League of Legends World Championship trophy gear, just as it does for the FIFA World Cup and Australian Open. Coca-Cola, Intel, Mountain Dew, Comcast, Airbus and Red Bull are front and center at esports events. Major brands are clearly on board.

But what if you’re not a Fortune 500 with millions of dollars to spend on sponsorships? Just like the “meat-sports,” the Overwatch League canceled its in-person games (or “homestands”) for March and April and moved to online matches, the same way League of Legends has. And that hasn’t made a dent in its value for advertisers. And what if you, like many today who are seeing all these event cancellations, don’t want to waste dollars on unseen impressions?  

It’s time to look in your pocket — the mobile device.

Amid COVID-19 Pandemic, Accurate Location Data Can Save Hassles and Even Lives

Updating your location data management information to reflect new hours, store closures, different contact information or special announcements is important for business success in general. In the midst of the global Covid-19 pandemic, maintaining accurate location data can actually have vital consequences for public health.

Yet a BrandMuscle study found that less than 60% of local business owners had even claimed their online business listings, which can lead to confusion about whether businesses are open or not. 

Location Weekly: Using Location Data to Track Covid-19

In this episode of Location Weekly, the Location-Based Marketing Association covers Turkish firm Elektral developing vending machine for masks, wipes, and disinfectants; UNL raising $2M for smart address system; Wuhan bringing its famous Cherry Blossoms online; and Israeli startup Noveto bringing “smart audio bubbles” to digital signage. The episode also features a special discussion on using location data to track the virus.

Latest Posts

Cybersecurity Firm DEVCON Says It Can Knock Out ‘Bad Ads’ Costing Publishers Billions

In this Q&A, cyber-security company DEVCON co-founder and CEO Maggie Louie details how she says her company halts “bad ads” before they victimize publishers and their readers.

dataPlor: The Importance of Personal Relationships and Other Key Findings from Emerging Market Small Business Survey

At dataPlor, we know that the best way to gather data and insights on emerging market small businesses is in person. We sent our general manager in Guadalajara out on a mission to understand how hyperlocal businesses communicate with customers and potential business partners and suppliers. He spent a week speaking first-hand to small business owners about their customer outreach strategies and how they chose potential businesses partners. Here’s what we found.

Retail as a Service: Amazon will Create (and Destroy) with Cashierless Checkout Solution

Mike Boland: The innovation including and surrounding cashierless checkout goes beyond payments to affect a broader set of functions like supply chain, inventory management, and store layouts. It’s like a retail toolkit in a box, with cash-flow friendly pricing, à la SaaS. You may have heard of it: It’s called retail as a service (RaaS), and it could transform the next decade of retail. Amazon will lead the way.

Beyond Proximity Offers: The Second Act of Beacons is Underway

Beacons have grown into a nuanced component of successful mobile marketing. We’ve learned what they do best—strengthen advertiser approaches to metrics and measurement as well as the relevance and contextual richness of on-the-ground, in- or near-store experiences—and we’ve figured out that while push notifications can be a part of the story, they aren’t the main narrative.

Digital Ad Trends to Watch in 2019, Mobile to Account for 71% of Digital Ad Spend

Programmatic SSP Pubmatic released on Tuesday morning an elaborate report detailing digital ad trends to watch in 2019. The highlights include a look into how mobile, video, and of course programmatic itself will continue to evolve in the coming year, reshaping the way brands reach customers.

Location Data Industry Gets Huge Wake-Up Call on Monday

Platforms, brands, and vendors benefiting from the reams of location data used to hit consumers with highly targeted ads should be paying attention to a change suggested by Google and Facebook’s appearances before government authorities, a New York Times exposé out Monday, and most importantly the impending arrival of GDPR-like legislation in the United States: 2019 will be the year privacy actually matters, posing a potentially devastating threat to the status quo of the location-based data and marketing industries.

How to Better Connect with Consumers via Mobile Coupons

Dan Slavin: It’s not just smartphone use that is growing—the number of people totally dependent on these devices to access the internet is rising as well. Both segments are projected to continue to show strong growth. Yet some marketers and retailers are struggling with attracting these users with offers and coupons.

Evolving Our Lens for Local Ranking Factors

Blumenthal and Mihm: We in the Local Search industry are not served by relying so heavily on traditional SEO logic and tools—in our approach to the Local Pack, our understanding of the ranking factors, and even what we suggest to clients as appropriate activities.

Consumers’ Reliance on Online Reviews, Evolving Rapidly, Is Reshaping Local Search

Recommendations gradually exchanged in person are now flooding webpages, most notably Google’s SERPs. Twenty-seven percent of consumers are now reading reviews of local businesses every day, marking a staggering jump from just 12% in 2017, according to a recent report.

LBMA Podcast: Spent Retail Analytics, Reveal Mobile Black Friday Report

On this week’s LBMA show: Spent retail analytics, LinkSure free global WiFi, Casino competes with AmazonGo in France, McDonald’s dancing in the streets of Bogata, Shopkick + Unilever & Walmart, Verve + AdCouncil for Goodwill. Special Research—Reveal Mobile Black Friday Report.