News and Analysis

Mobile Madness: Expert Roundup 2

Mobile has been a hot subject for the past year as marketers and technologists figure out how to map customer behavior and orchestrate marketing in the wake of Apple’s anti-tracking AppTrackingTransparency policy. In this roundup, experts from CatapultX, Ericsson Emodo, PPRO, and Mobivity weigh in on best practices for one of digital marketing’s most important devices.

Savvy Retailers Are Turning Returns Into Revenue — Here’s How

Returns are inherently expensive due to shipping and restocking fees, but some retailers are finding ways around those issues. In the process, they’re coming up with new strategies for building revenue streams from customer returns.

Google Is Using AI to Improve Business Listings — Here’s How

Google said it would be using artificial intelligence and machine learning to build a self-updating Maps product that predicts when business hours are likely to be wrong and updates listings automatically using AI-generated predictions.

Commentary

Physical Stores May Resemble Our Newsfeeds in the Near Future

We’re currently living in a time of unprecedented change in the marketing and advertising industries. One of the most interesting emerging trends is the incorporation of new advertising opportunities within physical stores, in ways that will remind you of your social media newsfeeds.

If you’re a member of Generation X, or even an older Millennial, you probably remember walking through the aisles in grocery stores and grabbing coupons out of plastic dispensers. What we will see occurring in the future is the 21st Century’s version of the coupon machine — the personalized newsfeed-ification of physical stores.

Employees Are Connecting On Facebook: Here’s Why They Shouldn’t

When they aren’t connecting in the office, 87% of employees are connecting on Facebook. With more than 1.5 billion daily active users, it’s no surprise that employees flock to the platform to connect with colleagues. Facebook is easy and familiar, and many employees have used it for years. When employees want to connect personally with someone they know professionally, Facebook is the natural first step. 

But Facebook isn’t the best place for making personal connections with coworkers, mainly because of the amount of personal content employees post. They express their political opinions and might post jokes and language that could easily offend in a professional setting. When you introduce professional contacts to a personal platform, the lines of what’s appropriate are blurred. People might begin to censor themselves, which isn’t always healthy. Or employees might feel uncomfortable with a coworker based on something they’ve seen online.

Retail is Not Dead, But Small Businesses Need Help

Card-Linked Offer (CLO) technology is leveling the playing field for all merchants. If you haven’t heard of CLOs, you’re not alone. According to the Cardlinx Association, CLO marketing is the fastest growing segment of digital marketing, with a majority of  large companies expecting to double their CLO budgets from last year, and the number of consumer transactions doubling from last year. Despite this rapid growth, most of the 25 million small businesses in the US have never heard of CLO marketing or know that it is available to them.

Latest Posts

Cousins Subs Leverages Social, Marketing Tech to Stay Local

Look at the menu board at Cousins Subs, and you’ll immediately notice how important local is to the restaurant’s brand. But the commitment extends beyond the Wisconsin cheddar cheese featured among the Midwest chain’s list of local ingredients—it goes all the way back to how the brand chooses to represent itself on social channels.

Street Fight Daily: Snap Wins With Programmatic AR Ads, How Cousins Subs Keeps It Local

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Snapchat’s Programmatic AR Ads Are Gaining Traction… Whole Foods Will Give Amazon Prime Customers 10% Off on Sale Items… Another Ad Tech Firm Reduces European Operations Ahead of GDPR…

Dstillery and Captivate Partner to Go Beyond Location-Based Targeting

Audience targeting is getting smarter, and reaching new customers ideal for a given brand’s campaign is getting more feasible thanks to a partnership between location-based digital video network Captivate and marketing intelligence firm Dstillery.

Google Maps Is Becoming More Personal and Useful, and Businesses Can Reap the Benefits

In recent months, Google has launched a number of changes to Maps. Users will win with the more personalized and intuitive future of the app. Businesses will win, too—so long as you manage your location data, content, and reputation.

Street Fight Daily: How Google Maps Changes Will Affect Businesses, Mobile Retail’s Future

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Google Maps Is Becoming More Personal and Useful, and Businesses Can Reap the Benefits… Forrester Estimates E-Commerce on Smartphones Will Hit $209 Billion in 2022… Amazon Go Expands to San Francisco and Chicago…

mobile data

Adsquare Leverages Quality Guarantee to Boost Marketer Confidence

The mobile data exchange adsquare believes it has finally cracked the code on data accuracy with a new product that aggregates first-party data from publishers and combines it with validated third-party data from the company’s own exchange.

Foreshadowing Future of Food Delivery, Delivery.com Launches Product for Workplace Orders

The team at delivery.com believes there are still holes in the workplace food ordering market waiting to be filled. Its attempt to meet those needs is debuting this morning, as the company adds new group ordering functionality to its platform.

Street Fight Daily: Amazon Cuts Out Google Shopping Ads, Advertisers Question Facebook ROI

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Amazon Stops Buying Prized Shopping Ads on Google… Facebook’s Big Threat Isn’t Cambridge Analytica — It’s Advertisers Questioning ROI… Google’s DoubleClick Ad ID Change Presents Challenges and Opportunity for Attribution Vendors…

LBMA Podcast: Thinknear, Facebook & Nike, Groupon Buys Vouchercloud

On this week’s edition of the Location-Based Marketing Association podcast: Thinknear, Facebook + Nike, Groupon buys Vouchercloud, Clear Channel launches RADARView, Oscar Meyer’s Bacoin, Coca-Cola teams up with Cargo.

Street Culture: dataPlor Strives for Transparency in Every Facet of Its Business

There’s a phrase dataPlor CEO and founder Geoff Michener uses so frequently and quickly that it almost sounds rehearsed: open, direct, transparent communication.