News and Analysis
Retailers Use AI to Mine Social Data for Back-to-School Trends
Students across the country are returning to the classroom this month — some for the first time in more than a year. While early indications show strong late-summer back-to-school sales, retailers aren’t leaving anything up to chance. Widespread confusion around health policies, safety protocols, and required supplies that can vary by school are leading retailers to rely on social media and artificial intelligence to collect information on emerging themes and trends.
Idomoo Launches Interactive Video Platform
Could highly personalized interactive video become the primary way that businesses communicate with customers in the future? That’s what the team at Idomoo is betting on. The company is launching a fully open, enterprise-grade platform called Living Video that will enable businesses to automatically update videos in real-time based on context and user input.
Commentary
Google’s Fake Listings Problem Gets More Attention—and May Spur Regulation
Blumenthal to Mihm: It seems to me that Google could take the fake listings issue off the table by seriously investing in cleaning up the fake listing and fake review issue. I just don’t think that they think that way.
At a minimum, as the company that has the monopoly in the local space, Google faces the expectation and responsibility to provide a service that truly serves the public and businesses. And they seem to forget that.
Cannes Roundup: A Triad of Innovation is Capturing Advertisers’ Attention and Spend Right Now
This year, we saw the rise of three elements of technology-driven outcomes that, I’d suggest, represent a triad of innovation — and those elements are agility, speed, and the product-development capabilities to allow early-adopting brands to actually access emerging marketplaces (such as audio, as we saw this year). The first two terms are interconnected, and each fuels the drive for innovative products that big-name brands are beta-testing already.
LBMA Vidcast: Square Adds DoorDash and Postmates
On this week’s Location-Based Marketing Association podcast: AppNexus rebrands to Xandr Invest with AT&T data, Cerebro Platform hyperlocal DOOH, Welcome travel itinerary app, McDonald’s McNugget experience in the UK, Square adds DoorDash & Postmates, iOS 13 to be much more location-sharing friendly.
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#SFSW18: Local’s Visual Future: The Rise of AR, VR, and New Customer Experiences
“We want to please the restaurants and we want to please the users,” said Danny Gordon, CEO of Auredi, just one company at Street Fight Summit West using visual technology to enrich customer experiences. “It’s unbelievable the amount of excitement we see when we show customers dishes that look exactly like they do in person.”
#SFSW18: How Nextdoor Is Building a Business Around Neighbors
Nextdoor is an app exclusively devoted to the local communities that keep the lights on for small businesses. Prakash Janakiraman, co-founder and chief architect of Nextdoor, joined Mike Boland, Street Fight’s analyst in residence, at Street Fight Summit West in Los Angeles Wednesday afternoon to discuss Nextdoor’s growth into a billion-dollar local business.
#SFSW18: Closing the Location Attribution Loop
Cameron Peebles, CMO of InMarket, emphasized that data should not just be used for attribution — to prove past ad placements have worked — but also to predict future consumer patterns and increase long-term marketing success. “Consumers don’t live their lives in points; they live their lives in patterns,” Peebles said.
Out of Its Rocky Recent Past, Philly.com Seeks to Be ‘Indispensable’
Philadelphia Media Network is building its future around a reorganized and united news operation that aims to produce more engaging editorial content with fewer editors and reporters and sell the package to readers of Philly.com for $2.99 a week after 10 free views. We recently caught up with PMN Editor and VP Gabriel Escobar to discuss this strategy.
Street Fight Daily: Mobile/Social/Video Dominate Ad Spending, Facebook’s Missing Video Metrics
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Trifecta of Mobile, Social, and Video Thrives While Print Declines… How Do We Measure Facebook’s Video Biz? It Still Hasn’t Told Us… For Third Oldest American Retailer, More Data and Business Hasn’t Meant More Advertising…
What Alignable’s New Trust Ratings Mean for Loyalty Vendors
Based on the results in Alignable’s 2018 Q1 Small Business Trust Index, the three least trusted categories of vendors include legal, hiring and people management, and loyalty and rewards. Alignable’s findings were based on Net Promoter Score ranges and averages for each products and services category.
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Streets Ahead: Google Chat, and Instagram Reels