News and Analysis

5 Voice Marketing Platforms for Brands

More than 33 million consumers in the U.S. are expected to shop using a smart speaker in 2022, and 51% of online shoppers now use voice assistants to research products before they buy. With more consumers relying on Amazon’s Alexa, Google Assistant, and Apple’s Siri to search for local products and services, brands are looking at how to incorporate voice into their existing marketing strategies.

Neighborly Recommendations Drive Local Business on Nextdoor

For multi-location marketers and small businesses, Nextdoor’s research reflects the importance of establishing a presence on local social networks such as Facebook and Nextdoor as well as monitoring customer sentiment and reviews.

Survey: Brands Marketers Switching from Paid Social to OOH

According to a new survey from OneScreen.ai, the majority of marketers are actively looking for alternatives to paid social in 2022, and 67% believe their digital returns have diminished, even after scaling up programs.

Commentary

The Ghost in the Machine: Google Gamifies Machine Learning

David Mihm to Mike Blumenthal: As for our Halloween topic, a spooky good SEO, Scott Hendison, tweeted a link over the weekend that I found fascinating: https://crowdsource.google.com. Even for those of us who are used to these kinds of initiatives coming from Google, it’s the most brazen public effort we’ve seen to train their machine learning algorithm via user contributions across a whole range of data types.

Mike: It is certainly brazen. There is NO attempt to bury this as an activity within some other program like their Captcha. It’s a gamification of their ML plain and simple, and if I know Google, the reward will be either insignificant or worse: a discount on some “premium product” (i.e., an ad). 

From Personal To Individual: Why Engaging Unique Consumers Requires Unique Communication

People everywhere receive “personalized” emails daily from brands greeting them by their first names. For a long time, brands have assumed this conveys genuine care for each customer. It’s certainly not the case anymore. Technology has evolved, and consumer expectations have risen to such a level that marketers must do much more. It’s no longer about saying, “We know you,” but rather, “We understand you.” To do this requires a major shift from personalization to individualization. 

It may sound relatively straightforward, but what this shift entails and how companies can incorporate individualization in their everyday communications presents a whole new set of challenges.

The Art of Making a Retail Holiday

From Black Friday and Cyber Monday to back-to-school sales, retail holidays may be arbitrary, but they have become a core component of successful sales and marketing strategies. As a result of their success, these holidays are becoming expected, fixtures of the retail industry embedded in its collective psyche. Companies must innovate to keep them fresh. Brands need to monitor competitors to see what works and what doesn’t work and tweak their strategies appropriately. 

Data on successful “holiday” campaigns reveal how to make the most of holidays, whether long-established or freshly innovated.

Latest Posts

LBMA Podcast: Walmart, Target, LinkedIN

Featured on this week’s edition of the Location-Based Marketing Association podcast: LEGO + Grand Visual, LinkedIN, Vyking shoes, Walmart, Target, HERE + Decawave, LBMA D/A/CH.

Why Google Decided Phone Calls Are the Key to Google Assistant’s Future Success

Among all the new AI-driven capabilities Google could’ve bestowed on its powerful Assistant, the company decided to focus on one capability in particular: a phone call.

Parking Startup’s Solution Keeps Shoppers In-Store Longer

Retailers have spent millions strategizing about which location-based marketing and cross-channel personalization tactics are most successful in increasing dwell times, but a startup based out of Miami thinks the answer retailers are looking for is actually right outside their front doors.

Street Fight Daily: Foursquare’s Machine Learning-Based Attribution, Duopoly’s Damage Control

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Spotify, TGI Friday’s Enlist Foursquare for Machine Learning-Backed Measurement… Facebook Demands Advertisers Have Consent for Email/Phone Targeting… Google Reboots Advertising Tools to Give Users More Control Over Their Data…

food

As Grocery Shopping Evolves, Supermarkets Partner with Meal Kit Services

By offering meal kit services within their stores, brick-and-mortar chains are disrupting the traditional supermarket model and giving themselves a better chance at competing with giants like Amazon.

Listen Up! Voice Makes Itself Heard in Delivery of Local News

“Voice is still in its early innings, but Edison Research data on smart speakers shows that the top things people are calling for is news. That’s enough for me to know that the time to get moving on this is right now,” says Amplifi Media CEO Steve Goldstein.

Street Fight Daily: Voice Disrupts Local News Delivery, Grocers Partner with Meal Kits

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Listen Up! Voice Makes Itself Heard in Delivery of Local News… As Grocery Shopping Evolves, Supermarkets Partner with Meal Kit Services… Apple’s App Store Privacy Crackdown May Hurt Facebook’s Onavo…

Placed Expands Attribution Solution to Measure TV-Driven Offline Visits

Placed launched television measurement as part of its ad exposure and attribution measuring services today, expanding its omni-channel attribution technologies to the full suite of advertising landscapes.

Report: Paid Search Offers Results, Especially on Mobile, at Time of Ad Saturation

A new report from ad firm Adthena, based on data from January 2017 to May 2018, shows evidence that paid search is a valuable beacon of light in the darkness that is consumer “banner blindness, ad fatigue, and near saturation of consumers’ digital ad experiences.”

Street Fight Daily: Google Helps Brands Close Path to Purchase, Placed Expands to TV

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Google Gives Brands Ads, Data to Compete on Price, Local Inventory… Facebook Will Ban Sellers of Shoddy Products… How Viacom Uses AI to Predict the Success of Its Social Campaigns…