News and Analysis
6 Touchless Payments Apps for Small Businesses
The latest wave of touchless payment solutions are designed for small merchants dealing with the fallout from the pandemic. Contactless payments went from being “nice to have” to a being an essential service for retailers in 2020, as consumers around the world discovered that they really didn’t want to touch cash or POS hardware while they were making purchases at local stores.
Digital Advertising’s 2-Sided Transparency Problem
There’s another side to digital advertising’s transparency problem: Companies don’t even know what they know about consumers. Just as consumers use dozens of apps, businesses use hundreds of applications. Most, if not all, of them collect data on employees and customers. But sifting through that data, figuring out what is necessary, and determining whether it is privacy-compliant is a Sisyphean task.
Commentary
Consumers Are Realizing the Value of Their Data. Here’s How Online Marketers Should Respond
It’s critical for marketers to invest in the right tools and technologies to abide by data-acquisition best practices that are not only compliant with regulations but also ensure consumer trust. At Blis, we conducted a study that digs into what extent consumers are starting to see their own behaviors, and predilections, as a currency. What we found is that marketers have a prime opportunity this year to rebuild trust and transparency with consumers.
The Ethical Stakes of Data Collection and Ad Targeting
With politicians and everyday political partisans on both the Left and Right peeved at Big Tech (the Left for tech’s role in economic inequality and election hacking, the Right for perceived anti-conservative bias, and thinkers across the spectrum for privacy concerns), it is time for Zuckerberg and his peers to get smarter about the arguments for and against data-driven ad targeting and the business models that rely on it. Facile paeans to relevance are not going to cut it—not with the scrutiny Facebook and the rest of the tech industry are now receiving. Tech executives should be as clear-eyed as their fiercest critics about the ethical underpinnings of their businesses. Only then can innovative, far-reaching conversations about the future of advertising, data collection, privacy, and Big Tech begin.
Interactive Marketing 2019: 4 Ways to Grow Your Audience with Innovation
There’s no denying that viewers today are fed up with plain advertising. It takes control of their digital activity and keeps them as passive witnesses to whatever is happening on the screen. Today, people expect a certain level of gamification from ads. Otherwise, the unit is typically shut down shortly after the ad begins or gets skipped quickly to the end. Enter interactive marketing.
Latest Posts
Street Culture: Life at Boxed Means “Do The Right Thing”
Wholesale ecommerce retailer Boxed is taking its position as team leader seriously. The company pays for its employees’ kids to go to college. It looked at the industry-wide “pink tax” and started a campaign against the higher prices. It even started contributing $20,000 to pay for employees’ weddings.
Street Fight Daily: Lyft Raises $1 Billion & Eyes IPO, Subscriptions Come to Instant Articles
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Lyft Is Said to Explore IPO as It Raises $1 Billion Led by Alphabet… Facebook to Test News Subscription Sign-Up Via Instant Articles… AI Can’t Devise Your Creative, But It Can Handle the Where, What, and When…
Local Media Consortium Not About to Retreat From Its Google and Facebook Ties
Questions are being raised about whether news publishers should keep expanding their relationships with Google and Facebook, and even whether they should pull out altogether. But you don’t hear that talk from the Local Media Consortium, which represents more than 70 newspaper, broadcasting and other local media companies.
So Long Local Search — Hello Machine-Directed Discovery
Whatever you thought you knew about getting your business found online and on mobile, or whatever you are currently learning, is already obsolete. The way consumers interact with search technology today is on its way out. Why? Autonomous cars, artificial intelligence and voice commands are all transforming search into something we can only begin to imagine.
The New Local Ecosystem: An Interview With Darren Shaw
As of this year, the task of updating the Local Search Ecosystem has been handed to Darren Shaw of Whitespark, who also inherited David Mihm’s other well-known brainchild, the Local Search Ranking Factors report. Last week, Darren released Local Search Ecosystem 2017, a bold departure in visual design and a much-needed update to the last edition, from 2014.
Google Elevates Local Marketing to Prime Time
Many industry watchers and practitioners correctly perceived the GMB API as a sign of how important it is for businesses to manage their location data properly. But the progression of the API represents something even bigger: empowering businesses to elevate and measure the value of local search marketing.
Yelp Analysis Finds Bright Spots for Business Growth
A new economic outlook report released by Yelp this morning finds ample opportunity for growth for small businesses throughout the country, and particularly those located in Southeastern states. “The markets we often think of as being on the forefront of trends in food, retail and other sectors can also be the toughest for small-business success,” explains data editor Carl Bialik.
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