News and Analysis
GumGum Partners with Xandr on Transparent Ad Solution
With growing demand for cookieless targeting solutions, the contextual-first global digital advertising platform GumGum announced a partnership with Xandr on an accredited cookieless solution for advertisers. Xandr now becomes the first major DSP to offer GumGum’s contextual intelligence technology, Verity, to allow brands to ensure their ads are placed in contextually relevant environments.
How Local Human-Driven Outreach is Helping Multi-Location Restaurants Grow Sales
Seeing first-hand the challenges that restaurants are facing as the founder and CEO of the digital marketing startup Field Day, Alex Nocifera recently rolled out a local subscription service that uses human-to-human connections to help restaurant brands manage local sales opportunities for catering. The program is primarily aimed at local franchise operators, offering last-mile marketing outreach to drive demand.
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.
Commentary
Retail as a Service: Amazon Tips its Hand
Amazon has a knack for moving into new vertical segments and then applying its logistical mastery and economies of scale to carve out margins and undercut incumbents. Then, it doubles down by scaling things up to its signature high-volume/low-margin approach. As Jeff Bezos ruthlessly admits, “Your margin is my opportunity.”
The latest place for this to unfold is retail. No, we’re not talking about Whole Foods, though that’s part it (more on that in a bit). We’re talking about Amazon’s transformation of the in-store experience — upending and streamlining logistics just like it’s done in shipping and cloud computing.
Here are some predictions for how Amazon’s disruption of retail via licensing of its Go technology will upend the industry.
Turning a Unique Vanity Phone Number into Many
Just over half of Americans now use their personal mobile phone numbers as their only phone numbers. A majority of Americans also no longer have landline phones in their homes, and that’s convenient because anyone, anywhere in the world, can now reach you with just that one number. But the opposite is true in the business world, where brands can leverage new technologies to create multiple vanity numbers in order to engage their customers across local, regional, and national marketing campaigns.
That statistic I cited above isn’t just an interesting bit of trivia. It highlights how the phone, an ancient communications medium compared to social media platforms, chatbots, messaging apps, and email, remains important to a brand’s marketing efforts.
Will Images Drive a New Local Search Paradigm?
Blumenthal to Mihm: Obviously AI/ML vis-à-vis image recognition is going to play a huge role going forward in terms of discovery and conversion. But I would have to add that it is also critically important to Google as a way to engage the user in “immersive search” behaviors. That is, drawing the user deeper and deeper into Google so that they never feel the need or desire to go someplace else. This will further seal off the walled garden of local discovery search.
You can see this in the new search by photos feature where the user is led into a grid of visual business choices and ultimately served up the Local Finder via the View list link or, if they click on an image, a business profile. But to get to the phone number, the user had to totally commit to diving deeper into Google.
Latest Posts
LBMA Podcast: Mapbox, GasBuddy, IKEA
On this week’s edition of the Location-Based Marketing Association podcast: Propellant Media, Singapore’s Lifesight, Mapbox API, Gasbuddy, IKEA’s sleepiest ad ever, Swrve + Bluedot.
Street Fight Daily: Teens Flee From Facebook, Google Wins in Immediate GDPR Aftermath
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… The State of Teens, Social Media, and Technology in 2018… Google Emerges as Early Winner from Europe’s New Data Privacy Law… Meeker’s 2018 Deck: Local Gets a Seat at the Table…
GateHouse Media’s Kirk Davis Argues Chain Is Becoming a ‘Leader in Community Engagement’
Cost-cutting equity funds have hollowed out scores of daily newspapers, turning their communities into “news deserts,” the critics say. But Kirk Davis, CEO of GateHouse Media, counters that the equity-funded conglomerate is transforming its 144 dailies into tribunes of the people. He makes his case in this Q&A.
Street Fight Daily: Mary Meeker’s Trends for 2018, The State of MarTech Acquisitions
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Mary Meeker’s 2018 Deck: Highlights and Analysis… What’s Next in Marketing Tech Investing?… Ad Tech Vendors Wrestle with IAB Europe’s Transparency and Consent Framework…
Customer Feedback: Authenticity as the Final Frontier
Coherent feedback cuts the distance between a company and its audience. But all that is compromised when paid reviews and rigged ratings enter the scene. Authenticity therefore remains the final frontier for marketing and client-oriented strategies.
Mobile App Header Bidding Expands Monetization Opportunities for Publishers
Increases in impression volume and ad spending on mobile devices are changing the monetization opportunities available to mobile app developers, according to a new report released by the publisher-focused sell-side platform PubMatic.
Street Fight Daily: Programmatic Comes to Audio, Publishers See Increase in Direct Traffic
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… DoubleClick Bid Manager Opens Up Digital Audio Ad Buying Globally… In the Post-Facebook Era, Publishers See Rise in Direct Traffic… Mobile App Header Bidding Expands Monetization Opportunities for Publishers…
SMB OS Operators, Part IV: Peter Krasilovsky
“We like to cite $500 billion as the broad SMB OS opportunity—roughly 3.5 times the size of local advertising,” veteran industry commentator Peter Krasilovsky says. “But I think the end number has got to be many times larger.”
Research Highlights Shifting Social Media Dynamics for Brands
Rachael Samuels, social media manager at Sprout Social, hopes that brand marketers who look at the research come away with a greater understanding that social cannot be approached with a one-size-fits-all mentality, and what works for one industry, or even one brand, may not work for another.
Street Fight Daily: Programmatic Plummets in Europe, The SMB OS Opportunity
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… GDPR Mayhem: Programmatic Ad Buying Plummets in Europe… How Do Consumers Choose in a World of Automated Ordering?… Google Bests Amazon in Smart Speaker Shipments…
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Google’s New AI Search Rules Create a Challenge for MULO Brands