News and Analysis
Long Pandemic and Local Commerce: Expert Roundup
Street Fight’s core focus is localized commerce and marketing: how brick-and-mortar businesses use technology to connect with customers. This month, we’re covering the continued impact of the pandemic on that space. To that end, three martech and retail tech leaders from VDX.tv, CatapultX, and VAI expound on the pandemic and local commerce in this expert roundup.
Simpli.fi’s Political Ad Tool Mixes Data Sets for Improved Match Rates
While politicians and PACs compete for contributions, agencies are working behind the scenes to help their clients’ ad dollars go further. A political advertising tool recently unveiled by Simpli.fi claims to do just that, mixing address lists from data providers and first-party databases to increase match rates.
Commentary
Using Location Intelligence as Marketing Pixels for the Real World
Without pixels, marketing in the digital world would be a guessing game. However, with 90% of all commerce still taking place in the physical world, oftentimes marketers find themselves in the dark, not knowing how their customers are interacting with their brands offline. Enter location intelligence, or as we like to call it, pixels for the real world.
Take a moment to reflect on the past few weeks. Did you stop at a coffee shop on the way to work? Did you work out on specific days of the week at a nearby gym? Are there restaurants you frequent when you are too lazy to cook at home? In a study, published in Nature Human Behaviour, researchers found that people frequent up to 25 places at any given time period. Similar to marketing pixels placed on websites, the ability to understand physical, real-world behavior such as path-to-purchase, visitation patterns, day-of-week preferences, and daily activities fuels more strategic decision making.
LBMA Vidcast: Amazon to Roll Out Hand Recognition Payment at Whole Foods
On this week’s Location-Based Marketing Association podcast: Skoda announces in-car voice assistant Laura, Philadelphia bans stores that don’t accept cash, Kochava teams with CubeIQ, GOAT let’s you try on exclusive sneakers in AR, Olo powering restaurant orders from Google search and maps, Amazon to roll-out hand recognition payment at Whole Foods.
Impending Brand Safety Woes: Nasty and Misleading Political Ads Hit Facebook
If brand safety in the 2020 election season does not immediately seem concerning, consider the following: You’re an advertiser hoping to run digital ads for your advertising tech solution. You pay a publisher with huge traffic big money to score impressions on its platform. But as soon as a Democratic voter navigates to the site and sees your ad, along with it pops up a big Trump ad making inflammatory claims about Biden. The web surfer navigates away from the site. Who wins?
Latest Posts
#SFSNYC: UPS, TripAdvisor, and HappyOrNot Break Down Divergent Approaches to Customer Feedback
Consumer feedback and brands have a complex and sometimes contentious relationship. Three panelists from companies with starkly different relationships to both their customers and the customer feedback process provided their angles on the issue at Street Fight Summit in New York Wednesday.
#SFSNYC: GroundTruth Turns On-the-Ground Data Into IRL Transactions
When consumers visit physical stores, the likelihood that they will complete a purchase shoots up, especially in comparison to the likelihood they will make a purchase after visiting a digital site. “Visits lead to sales,” was the message of Hongzhe Sun of GroundTruth, one of the sponsors of Street Fight Summit in New York Wednesday.
#SFSNYC: May AI Help You? The Marketing Opportunities in Intelligent Search
Artificial intelligence is the future of search engines. Increasingly conversational, intelligent, and visual, search engines are adapting to become the centerpiece of consumer engagement, as well as a virtually new tool for marketers. Purna Virji, senior manager for global engagement at Microsoft/Bing, broke down the AI revolution in search at Street Fight Summit Wednesday.
#SFSNYC: Investors on Billion-Dollar Opportunities in Local and Where to Find Them
Long before startups become the “next big thing” the masses talk about, investors have an opportunity to use their wallets to weigh in on the prospects for those emerging companies. At Street Fight Summit Wednesday in New York, investors pointed to voice, VR and AR, and influencers as some hot topics in local investing right now.
#SFSNYC: Verve’s Mark Fruehan Talks Being a Tactician in Location-Based Advertising
Mobile and local offer huge opportunities in potential revenue to advertisers smart enough to capitalize on them. But location data will ultimately hold value for marketers only if its collection and analysis rests on accurate audience identification, said Mark Fruehan, executive vice president of enterprise platforms at Verve, at Street Fight Summit Wednesday.
#SFSNYC: Broadly CEO: Brick-and-Mortars Need to Become Messaging Centers
Phone calls and contact forms are dead, but what about websites? Not so much, said Josh Melick, CEO of Broadly, at Street Fight’s annual summit in New York Wednesday. With this trend showing no signs of stopping, websites—especially those of local businesses—need to become messaging centers.
#SFSNYC: The Growing Power of SMB OS
Until recently, brick-and-mortar shopping relied on the digital world for advertising functions and not much else. But now, local retail has a new digital arena—the full-service operating system. Three leaders in this expanding set of technological solutions for SMBs laid out the state of the field, known as SMB OS, at Street Fight Summit in New York Wednesday.
#SFSNYC: Making Conversational Interfaces the Frontline for Customer Interaction
The development of conversational language to interact with chatbots, digital assistants, smart devices, and other machines is changing the ways consumers make use of such platforms to find the information and services they want—and this change is only going to get more important for brands and local businesses to address.
How Peoria Journal Star Did a Lot More With Less After Deep Cuts Shrank the Newsroom
“We made it our mission, working with our publisher at the time, Ken Mauser, that we would reach out to the people of the South Side and make sure they had a place where they could tell us about the good things happening where they live,” Peoria Journal Star Executive Editor Dennis Anderon says of reaching out to neglected community members.
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