News and Analysis
5 Retail Media Networks to Watch in 2022
Demand for first-party data, coupled with the looming disappearance of third-party cookies, has created a moment of opportunity for innovative multi-location brands and retailers. Retail media networks offer a way for brands across the spectrum of verticals to monetize the reams of personally identifiable information they’ve collected from their own digital properties, like apps and websites, and expand their global footprints.
Brands Embrace Holistic Data to Improve CX
Flawless experiences, complete personalization, and timely communication across multiple channels. Consumer expectations have never been higher. With the line between success and failure now razor thin, more brands are asking how they can use data to provide customized experiences that cater to each buyer’s wants and needs.
Report: Brand Loyalty Declines as Consumers Push for Transparency
Following two tumultuous years, consumers are returning to their pre-pandemic ways. Spending on experiences and activities is up, and shoppers are returning to stores in person. Consumers are looking for the best selection and the best prices. What they’re not concerned with is brand loyalty. Where has the love gone?
Commentary
SEO Trends for 2020 That You Need to Know
In 2020, we can only expect the competition for the attention of Internet audiences to become even more intense. More and more businesses appear each day, all raring to get to the top of the search results.
Add to that the fact that search engines, Google in particular, will continue to make changes to their algorithms in the coming year. SEOs must be on their toes to stay on top of the latest SEO trends. Here are some of the changes, which include the further ascendance of video, voice, and mobile as well as premiums on longer content and possible openings for non-Google search engines.
LBMA Presents Location Weekly: One Nation, Tracked; Uber Works; Smart Home Synergy
Location Weekly Episode #445 is ready to help you keep yourselves up to date over the holidays. Starting with a discussion on the New York Times article “One Nation, Tracked,” we also discuss Uber Works launching in Miami, the team-up of Amazon, Apple, and Google to make smart homes interoperable, and Goodwill reaching 1.4M mobile devices with location data via Teemo.
Then vs. Now: 10 Years of Local Search
David Mihm and Mike Blumenthal offer their take on a decade in local search. Among other topics, they take stock of Google’s dominance.
Mike: Now, it seems that the battle to become the hegemon of local has been signed, sealed, and delivered by Google not just in the US but worldwide. Their well-played hand with Android seems to have been the push they needed. And they managed to gain a totally dominant position IN SPITE of the Google Plus fiasco, which started around that time.
David: Google Plus! I’d honestly forgotten about that debacle already. In our little corner of the world, the fact that Google could waste all those years, person hours, and billions of dollars developing Google Plus and still ascend to its current position in local search shows you just what a colossal opportunity Facebook has missed in this space.
Latest Posts
Facebook Takes a Stab at Local—Again
“As it stands, Facebook’s latest local effort is of academic interest but hardly seems a reason for businesses to actively re-engage with the free side of the social giant’s features. From a competitive viewpoint, it hardly seems the stuff of legend needed to take on the current local search hegemon, Google,” Mike Blumenthal tells David Mihm in their latest biweekly column.
TruRating, Verifone Deal Highlights Importance of Customer Feedback Data
In a move that highlights just how important customer feedback data has become to mid-size businesses, the global payments and commerce juggernaut Verifone recently announced that it’s partnering with TruRating, a comparatively small but influential customer insight company that specializes in point-of-sale customer feedback solutions.
Newly Launched Block Club Chicago (Out of DNAinfo) Goes a ‘Bit Old School’
Last November, discount-stock-brokerage billionaire Joe Ricketts summarily shut down his DNAinfo operations in the Windy City and New York. But in a fast-paced reinvention, the DNAinfo/Chicago team has Kickstarted its way back onto the streets and into the neighborhoods with the June launch of Block Club Chicago.
Heard on the Street, Episode 10: Apple, Amazon, and Localized Brand Marketing
How are multi-location businesses shifting their local ad spend? What do Apple’s latest mapping moves mean for local search? And what’s Amazon’s master plan for advertising and commerce? These are a few of the topics we bat around in an analyst roundtable for the latest episode of the Heard on the Street podcast.
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