News and Analysis
Invoca Raises $83M to Help B2C Businesses Offer Better Contact Centers
The conversation intelligence company Invoca is helping businesses solve customer service problems by building personalized contact center services in addition to offering phone call analytics. As a result, Invoca just raised $83 million in Series F funding at a $1.1 billion valuation, four times the valuation of its last round in 2019.
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.
Commentary
It’s Neural Matching: Google Explains the November Ranking Shakeup
A tweet on Monday from Google search liaison Danny Sullivan provides an explanation for the rankings shakeup that has perplexed the local search community since the beginning of November. Google began using neural matching to generate local search results.
Local search has just undertaken a huge evolutionary step. No longer are local results being matched to user queries solely on the basis of identifiable ranking factors, such as proximity to searcher, keywords in business names, primary category of the listing, review count, and so on. That isn’t to say such factors are now unimportant, but they have been augmented by a broader and more general sense of relevance delivered by neural matching.
Carriers, It’s Time to Weld the Lid Shut on Customers’ Data
Personalization and privacy seem inherently at odds. After all, media companies such as Facebook act like vacuum hoses for data – collecting much more than they need. That’s problematic in a world where data breaches dominate headlines nearly every week. However, where Facebook and others go low, mobile carriers can go high. In fact, mobile carriers that aim to be media companies have a huge opportunity to respect privacy while providing great personalization in their original content.
So, how can carriers take this high road — that is, deliver personalized content experiences without storing consumers’ personal information? By focusing on the device itself – leveraging local storage and client-side execution (rather than requiring server interaction) to help carriers deliver a personalized experience that is incredibly safe. This allows carriers to implement the industry-changing trend of device-centric discovery (DCD), which makes it easy for subscribers to find news/sports/entertainment/games without having to wade through multiple apps and searches. With DCD, carriers can create personalized content experiences that don’t expose subscribers’ personal data to external privacy risks, and in the process, become mobile media leaders.
LBMA Vidcast: PayPal to Acquire Honey; Apple Teams with PlayNetwork
On this week’s Location-Based Marketing Association podcast: Mobivity launching omnichannel offer platform with Subway, Apple teaming with PlayNetwork for retail music, PayPal to acquire Honey for $4B, Tesco’s One Stop launches AR game, JCPenney opening new store with barbershop and styling, and CVS + Weather Channel team-up on AI flu predictions.
Latest Posts
Street Fight Daily: Accuracy is King for Data Buyers, Google’s Earnings Make a $5 Billion Fine Look Silly
DATA, DOLLARS, DISASTER… Study: Accuracy is the Most Important Factor for Marketers Buying or Using Audience Data… Surprise? Google Beats Expectations, Driven by Mobile and Cloud Services… Black Monday: Tronc Axes Half the New York Daily News Staff…
Black Monday: Tronc Axes Half the New York Daily News Staff
It is capturing cynical headlines across the media landscape: Tronc, the widely trashed name for the media company formerly known as Tribune Publishing, has sacked half the staff of the New York Daily News.
Mobile Coupons Are About to Overtake Paper—Here’s How Retailers Can Capitalize on That
When participants in CodeBroker’s 2018 Mobile Coupon Consumer Research Report were asked just how quickly they would likely redeem a coupon they received via text message, 25% said they would use it within three days. That number grew to 60% when they were asked if they would use it within a week.
Ohio Car Dealership Sees Early Success with Location-Targeted Mobile Ads
Years of ingrained assumptions about the way cars are marketed and sold have made the automotive industry a challenge for hyperlocal vendors. But at Kia of Bedford, Director of Operations David Gruhin is finding unexpected success with location-based marketing tactics.
Street Fight Daily: Mobile Coupons On Verge of Overtaking Paper, Smart Speakers Capture Media’s Attention
TODAY IN DIGITAL MARKETING… Mobile Coupons Are About to Overtake Paper—Here’s How Retailers Can Capitalize on That… For News Publishers, Smart Speakers Are the Hot New Platform… Ohio Car Dealership Sees Early Success with Location-Targeted Mobile Ads…
LeSportsac Uses AI to Build Omni-Experiences for Shoppers
As digital marketing practices evolve in the retail space, LeSportsac has had to shake up its strategy to keep apace. Using a combination of artificial intelligence and machine learning, LeSportsac has been able to modernize its marketing programs and more effectively serve its customers.
5 Online-to-Offline Attribution Platforms for Local Marketers
Online-to-offline attribution isn’t a challenge without a solution. A number of vendors are serving the local market with platforms designed to help local marketers at big brands and multi-location retailers assign the correct value to each point of touch in their multi-touch campaigns. Here are five vendors to which retail brands can turn.
Street Fight Daily: Online-to-Offline Attribution Platforms, Global Retailer Uses AI Vendor to Deliver Omni-Experience
TODAY IN DIGITAL MARKETING… 5 Online-to-Offline Attribution Platforms for Local Marketers… LeSportsac Uses AI to Build Omni-Experiences for Shoppers… Publishers Complain GDPR Consent Signals Are Ignored by Ad Buyers…
Why This Select List of Local News Providers Includes Only One Daily Newspaper
A year-long study of newsrooms in the U.S. and Europe by two Danish journalists has singled out 16 local providers in the U.S. who are meeting the researchers’ main criterion: structural changes “to forge closer ties and stronger relations to their communities and audiences”—with a special focus on journalism over commerce, technology, and business models.
Street Culture: Three Years Later, What’s Changed and What’s Stayed the Same at MomentFeed
CEO Robert Blatt says the company culture is changing, focusing more on what it means for MomentFeed to be the best place for employees to work. Anticipating change in culture is essential, he says, because what your company is doing well in one period of evolution can prevent it from doing well in the next.
Street Fight’s Big 3
Street Fight Columns
Street Fight Categories
Meta Is Automating Ads, But Brands Still Face a Bigger Problem