News and Analysis

5 Brands Leveraging AI to Give Consumers What They Want This Holiday Season

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What do shoppers really want this holiday season? As more brands transition to first-party data, advanced technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are taking the guesswork out of managing supply and improving the shopping experience with more personalized service.

Last-Mile Delivery

With Supply Chain in Crisis, Retailers Use Tech-Enabled Processes to Monitor Demand

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Demand for e-commerce shopping and fast shipping continues to be high, which puts additional pressure on retailers to fulfill consumers’ needs. As smaller, independent retailers look at how they can handle the upcoming surge, now is the time to utilize cloud-based communication tools like Twilio to keep customers satisfied.

How Younger Platforms Are Chipping Away at Facebook’s Dominance in Social

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There’s a lot of talk in the martech/adtech ecosystem about Facebook and Instagram’s gradual loss of sway in social advertising, especially relative to video-first apps popular among young people such as Snapchat and TikTok. But how much are things really changing, and why?

Commentary

First-Party Versus Third-Party Data: What You Should Know

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Using first-party data is a win-win. As marketers, you are fostering an ongoing relationship with your customers and prospects by better communicating and serving them. But there needs to be a strategy and long-term commitment. In a survey of US digital marketers by Advertiser Perceptions and programmatic agency MightyHive, respondents said they were, on average, tapping into just 47% of their company’s first-party data potential. It takes the right strategy and technological infrastructure in place to activate first-party data at scale.

Spotlight On: Creative Testing Best Practices for Q3 2019

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User acquisition advertising is evolving rapidly. Every quarter for the last few years, either Facebook or Google has made significant changes to their platforms that make it more and more possible to automate user acquisition advertising. Because these changes are available to everyone, competition has increased. Any competitive advantage that third-party ad tech tools had given is gone. 

The last thing the machines have not automated or started to automate – creative – ends up being a UA manager’s last competitive advantage. 

This makes every aspect of creative vital to success. 

The History and Value of Citations, or Citations are Dead, Long Live the Citation

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Mihm to Blumenthal: Setting aside the fact that the vast majority of calls you receive from non-Google directories are from salespeople, if you’re paying for an expensive citation service with analytics, compare the non-Google numbers to your GMB Insights. It’s going to be a drop in the bucket.

It’s time that every brand, regardless of size, ask itself whether going beyond Google, Facebook, and maybe Yelp is worth paying any premium. 

If a tree falls in the citation forest and no customers are there to see it, not only does it not make a sound, but Google doesn’t care that it fell.

Latest Posts

AR Cloud: The Linchpin for Local AR

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What about the non-Googles of the world? How will they create AR and visual search apps that can map environments reliably and return the correct info or graphics? The answer is the still-theoretical but critical AR Cloud.

LBMA Podcast: Placed, CityMapper, WeWork

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On this week’s LBMA podcast: BAG Networks, Placed, Citymapper, Robomart, REI, BMW acquires Parkmobile, Universal + Amazon Alexa, and WeWork buys Conductor.

Street Fight Daily: Facebook Launches Local Hotspots, Media Companies Shift to YouTube

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Facebook Launches Express WiFi App for Its Local Business-Operated Hotspots… Why Media Companies Are Shifting Their Attention to YouTube… Why Publishers Are Eliminating Programmatic Silos…

How Patch Has Quietly ‘Bootstrapped’ Itself Into 36 NYC Neighborhoods

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Patch CEO Warren St. John tells our columnist Tom Grubisich why he decided to bet big on hyperlocal news in New York City while other local publishers were shutting down or threatening to do so, retrenching or selling out.

Using Location Data to Engage Consumers on St. Patrick’s Day

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St. Patrick’s Day is the most popular day of the year at most Irish pubs and restaurants in the U.S., but the biggest crowds might not come together in the cities you would expect.

Street Fight Daily: Amazon Courts Ad Buyers, B2B Marketers Unprepared for GDPR

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Triopoly Time? Amazon Preps New Attribution Tool and Courts Ad Buyers… Forrester Says Only 15% of B2B Marketers Are Fully Compliant with GDPR… Google Will Prioritize Stories for Paying News Subscribers…

SurePath Capital Breaks Down Last Year’s Money Moves in SMB Software

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Last week, my firm SurePath Capital Partners released its annual State of SMB Software Report, which looks at fundraising and exit activity in the SMB software space in North America. 

Taking Control of the Control Group: How to Collect Reliable Data

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Only when marketers account for the totality of their consumer data and account for it in an integrated way will the data actually offer visibility and control.

food

Street Fight Daily: Walmart Expands Grocery Delivery Program, Numbers on Amazon’s Dominance

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Walmart to Expand Grocery Delivery from 6 to 100 Markets by Year End… More Digital Time Spent on Amazon Than Next Nine Retailers Combined… Facebook Aiming to Launch News for Watch This Summer…

With Product Launch, GroundTruth Helps CPG Brands Focus on ROI

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GroundTruth’s new suite of solutions is being dubbed True Performance, and according to this morning’s announcement, it’s geared exclusively toward CPG brands looking for more efficient and accurate ways to measure their location-based marketing efforts.