News and Analysis
ENGINE Rebrands as Big Village in Bid to Eliminate Silos in AdTech
The global advertising, technology, and data company ENGINE announced today that it has rebranded as Big Village in the U.S., Europe, and Australia. The company says the name reflects a renewed mission to eliminate siloed ways of industry thinking and reimagine what it means to be an integrated solutions firm in the current market. With this new rebrand, Big Village is bringing a full range of services under one roof, including adtech, media, insights, and creative experts.
Simpli.fi Now Lets Brands Execute Google, YouTube Ad Buys Through Single Partner
Simpli.fi’s decision to open up its solutions suite to include Google Ads and YouTube advertising is part of a broader push among adtech providers to become all-in-one platforms, rather than vertical-specific solutions.
ReviewTrackers Acquired By InMoment as Consolidation Sweeps MarTech
ReviewTrackers is an important acquisition for InMoment. The company currently works with more than 175,000 business locations to manage customer reviews across hundreds of sites using its review management technology. With the acquisition of ReviewTrackers, InMoment becomes one of the first experience companies to extend customer insights, analytics, and action across the full customer lifecycle.
Commentary
Follow the Money: Will Wearables Inflect in 2020?
Apple is far ahead with Watch and Airpods, which may have sold 3 million units since Black Friday. Google meanwhile acquired Fitbit to buttress its wearables play. Amazon and Microsoft launched wearables lines in the past quarter, and smaller players like Bose and Snap are planting seeds for a wearables future.
There’s an underlying driver for this activity that goes back to the perennial analyst exercise of “following the money.” This is all about extrapolating product roadmaps based on tech giants’ motivations. This is often to future-proof their core businesses or diversify revenue in the face of maturing products.
For Luxury Brands, The Possibilities of Programmatic Cannot Be Ignored
For luxury brands, creating customer relationships, and the revenues they bring, is everything. A $25,000 watch or $150,000 vehicle is rarely an impulse buy but instead a purchase achieved after many different points of engagement.
Programmatic advertising is taking an increasingly higher percentage of all ad budgets, and luxury brands and their marketing efforts need to hop on board with this trend. Digital advertising has the power to use contextual targeting and select first-party data to find the right audiences at the right times and in the right places, no matter how high-echelon the product.
LBMA Vidcast: 7-Eleven Launches Mobile Voice Ordering, Adidas Tests AR Instagram
On this week’s Location-Based Marketing Association podcast: 7-Eleven launching mobile voice ordering, Adidas testing AR Instagram in London, Amex launching a mobile restaurant booking app, Augmented Reality wine labeling with Winerytale app, Toys R Us first in Canada to use Snapchats Portal Lens, and Factual introducing predictive & loyalty audiences.
Latest Posts
LBMA Podcast: Uber, Hyundai & Amazon, Compass
On this week’s Location Based Marketing Association podcast: Compass, Taiwan’s STOMAP, Grocery app Cooklist, Diageo goes AR with Bulleit bourbon, Hyundai + Amazon, Uber’s new features, and HERE teams up with Locomizer.
Google Updates Search to Recommend Local Events Based on User Interests
Google is bringing the personalization zeitgeist to local event recommendations. The company reported on its blog Thursday that it is releasing a series of new features that will make it easier for users to find essential information about events of interest to them right on search engine result pages.
Raise Report: SessionM, Perch, Pointy Secure New Funding
Every two or three weeks, we round up some of the biggest fundraises taking place in hyperlocal marketing, commerce, and tech. This week’s edition includes funding for Mention Me, Standard Cognition, Cogito, and Dialpad.
Hires and Openings at Blis, TruMeasure, and Adzuna
Every two or three weeks, Street Fight rounds up some of the latest hires and new openings in the hyperlocal marketing, tech, and media industries. This week’s edition includes moves and openings at Broadly, Cedato, Magisto, SiteSwan, and New York Magazine.
Street Fight Daily: Google Is Disrupting Local Event Discovery; Amazon Teams with Yext to Empower Local Businesses
TOP STORIES IN LOCAL & DIGITAL MARKETING… Google Updates Search to Recommend Local Events Based on User Interests… Amazon Expands Alexa’s Brain With Yext Business Services… Advertising Helps Push Amazon’s Quarterly Profit to $2.5 Billion…
Street Fight Daily: Facebook Feels the Impact of Its Scandals; GrubHub Acquires LevelUp
TOP STORIES IN DIGITAL MARKETING… At Last, Facebook Feels the Impact of Its Errors… GrubHub Acquires Payments and Loyalty Company LevelUp for $390 Million… Top Lesson for News Sites in SF Innovation Tour: Identify Users and Win Them Over One by One…
After Nearly Two Years in the Hot Seat, Facebook Feels the Burn
In its Q2 earnings report, the social giant reported that growth has stalled in the United States and Canada, its most valuable markets. And its overall user growth for the quarter of just 22 million users is the smallest jump since 2011, indicating that a slowdown in revenue growth will likely prove a long-term challenge in the years ahead.
How Hospitality Brands Capitalize on Summertime Social Trends
Social is becoming an increasingly popular channel for research and an important resource for word-of-mouth recommendations, with 67% of consumers saying that at least half of their searches result in a visit to a business, according to a 2017 survey by ReviewTrackers.
Top Lesson for News Sites in SF Innovation Tour: Identify Users and Win Them Over One by One
Revenue was, naturally, very much on the minds of the 12 publishers, broadcasters, and other news media executives who took part in the Local Media Association’s June 2018 San Francisco Innovation Mission. But Jed Williams, LMA’s chief innovation officer, said the event focused on audience engagement.
Report: E-Commerce Sites Must Fend Off Looming Challenge from Social Platforms
The opportunity is ripe for social platforms with the right transactional infrastructure and e-commerce sites with a proper slate of marketing functions to cross into the conventional territory of the other, a new report from video marketing firm Magisto indicates. If e-commerce sites do not go beyond transactions to offer their vendors marketing possibilities, they may lose the market on transactions altogether.
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Meta Is Automating Ads, But Brands Still Face a Bigger Problem