News and Analysis

How Brands Can Adjust Marketing to Reassure Customers amid Inflation

J. Walker Smith, Chief Knowledge Officer, North America, at the data analytics and brand consulting company Kantar, checked in with Street Fight to share original research on customer attitudes toward inflation and discuss how marketers can shift practices to best address this challenge.

Snap Scales Up its Geo-Local AR Ambitions

Snap’s AR lens playbook started with a handful of in-house lenses like rainbow vomit and dog ears, before opening up the Lens Studio platform to creators everywhere. And it seems to be working, given that Snap now gets 6 billion daily lens plays. Could geo-local AR be next?

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.

Commentary

LBMA Vidcast: Vibenomics, Southwest Airlines and ApplePay, Blis and Location Sciences

On this week’s Location-Based Marketing Association podcast: Vibenomics AOOH platform, Cerberus Interactive takes on location-based gaming, Southwest Airlines with ApplePay, Blis partners with Location Sciences, 7Eleven launches mobile checkout in NYC, Unacast releases Turbine platform.

Is Visual Mapping the Next Google-Apple Battleground?

As Google and Apple lead the way, we are getting closer to ubiquitous visual mapping. If that happens, there will be significant implications for entities that currently use search and mapping for marketing or online presence. They’ll need to make sure they are optimized in this new format.

This could lead to an extension of SEO to cultivate presence in visual experiences. Just like in search, correct business location and details will need to be optimized to show up in the right places. You don’t want the AR overlay for your restaurant floating above the salon next door.

Apple’s Edge in the App Store, Big Tech, and Antitrust

Apple execs told the Times that the company’s apps show up so frequently in searches not because it tips the scales but because its apps are already very popular and are designed to please consumers. But that logic is in itself concerning: A company with nearly unparalleled power and insight into what consumers are looking for in terms of apps uses its understanding of consumer desire and vast resources to create apps that will defeat rivals (especially startups or young companies) in the App Store it owns. Even if there is no foul algorithmic play, the competitive advantage is clear. The question is whether it’s enough for antitrust action.

Latest Posts

Street Fight Daily: Google & Apple Boost Local AR, Foursquare’s New Location-Based Creative

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Report: Smartphones, Developer Kits Drive Local AR and Visual Search… Foursquare’s New In-House Agency Will Pump Out Location-Based Creative… Marketers Still Shy Away from Venturing Too Deep into Ad Tech…

Sprinklr Launches AI Solution to Help Brands Manage Customer Experiences at Scale

Dubbed Sprinklr Intuition, Sprinklr’s AI tool can process an average of 700 million messages per day across social channels, and it becomes smarter with each customer interaction.

Top Experts Hold Conclave in Major Effort to Save Local News Industry

“The news industry now has to be very much focused on understanding users and delivering to them a very powerful, useful experience so they will be happy to pay for it,” says veteran journalist Bill Densmore.

Street Fight Daily: Scandal Fails to Dent Facebook’s Growth, AI Biz Expected to Boom

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Increased Facebook Ad Prices Drive Revenue Growth… Gartner Expects the AI Business Market to Grow 70% This Year… Advertisers, Agencies Agree Transparency in Ad Buying Is A Problem, But Disagree on the Blame…

Makeup Product Reviews

Influenster Launches Solution to Help Brands Leverage Organic Reviews

In a bid to help retailers take advantage of the growth in user-generated reviews, the product discovery and reviews platform Influenster recently launched its own service to continuously supply organic, non-incentivized reviews to brand and retail websites like Walgreens, Target, and Bloomingdales.

Blaze Pizza Leverages Mobile App, Instagram, Events to Entice and Keep Customers

Blaze Pizza has branded itself as the on-the-go pizza option for millennials. In-app mobile ordering, location technology, and a focus on partnering with local franchise owners who know their neighborhoods have allowed Blaze to maintain a robust loyalty program and keep its customers coming back.

Heard On The Street, Episode 2: Jiu Jitsu and the Art of Content Marketing, with Monica Ho

“I’m a big believer in a value exchange,” says Monica Ho of SOCi. “Whether you’re a brand or an agency, or maybe you’re an entrepreneur, everyone is starved for more data on more information on certain things that are affecting the landscape.

Street Fight Daily: Blaze Pizza Innovates in Local, The State of In-App Mobile Ads

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Blaze Pizza Leverages Mobile App, Instagram, Events to Entice and Keep Customers… Is There Hope for In-App Mobile Advertising?… Buyers Warm Up to Amazon’s Ad Biz…

Perch Deploys In-Store Tech to Help Retailers Close the Path to Purchase

Street Fight recently caught up with Perch CEO Trevor Sumner, who will speak at Street Fight’s Brooklyn summit this June, to hear about the latest at Perch and talk about how in-store marketing tech can lift brands’ bottom lines.

Local Merchants Highly Dependent on Social Media at Time of Uncertainty for Platforms

Well over half of the local merchants with larger budgets that we surveyed for a report last year indicated that paid Facebook ads constituted their top marketing tactic. That’s a pretty heavy dependence on a company that’s been in the news for all the wrong reasons lately.