News and Analysis

Invoca Acquires DialogTech as Companies Chase New Data Sources

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With Google phasing out cookies and Apple limiting access to the identifier for advertisers, among other data privacy reforms, companies need more information about what their customers need. Conversation intelligence solution Invoca thinks it is taking a step toward providing that access with its $100 million acquisition of rival DialogTech.

Peer39 Uses First-Party Audience Data to Power Contextual Ads

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Peer39 became one of the latest entrants in the contextual AI space just this morning, launching first-party contextual onboarding to turn advertiser intelligence into future-proof targeting categories. In practice, this means advertisers that can no longer track customers across the Web with cookies can use first-party information about them to serve them ads based on their interests.

Frictionless Payments Evolve Post-Pandemic

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From tethered to cordless, handheld to hands-free. As payment processing hardware continues to evolve, retailers are beginning to experiment with allowing customers to actually become their own point-of-sale systems.

Commentary

LBMA Vidcast: McDonald’s & Waze, Lego & Snapchat

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On this week’s Location-Based Marketing Association podcast: Hermes AR package delivery, NFC forum’s payment standard, Lego + Snapchat + Kabooki, McDonald’s + Waze billboards, Geon Network, Glympse partners with Albertsons.

Four Keys to Ensure Your Brand Has Local Authenticity Online

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Taking time to ensure that your brand is represented authoritatively and genuinely online helps build a solid connection with your audience. But how does your brand communicate that authenticity at a local level? Here are four essential ways to build local authenticity through your localized social marketing efforts.

Human Judgment, Automation, and the Future of Ad Tech

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For now, I propose two major concerns—two challenges, even, for further thought—surrounding AI for the ad tech industry. The first is that the datafication of human experience that has allowed for precise ad targeting needs to be radically reconsidered, not just in terms of what can be done to obtain the consent of consumers for data collection, as the rising privacy movement has called tech companies to consider, but also in terms of what is lost and what is truly gained when the attributes of real people are transformed into consumer data. The second is that the human-machine hybrid decision-making model, while surely the best available in a hypothetical set that also includes human-only and machine-only models, will have to grapple with the bias and poor decisions of the humans who program the machines that will take on the task of regulating large platforms at scale. 

Latest Posts

Patch’s Leader Says the Network Today Is Proof That Local Can Scale

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Warren St. John, who has led Hale Global’s Patch since its 2015 takeover from Aol., says the network has evolved into a workable model for scaled local news — editorially, financially and as a community asset. In this Q & A, he presents his case.

New Street Fight Report: Benchmarking and Best Practices in Enterprise Local Marketing

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The report Enterprise Local Marketers 2017: Benchmarking and Best Practices examines current trends in their local marketing tactics, channels, and operations. By analyzing the survey data and correlating digital marketing effectiveness with spending, tactics, and management, Street Fight has identified key enterprise local marketing best practices.

Street Fight Daily: Brands Benefit from Voice Revolution, Placed Unveils New Attribution Tool

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… As Voice Has Its Moment, Tech Giants Give Brands a Way Into the Conversation (AdWeek) Voice is having its moment. People are talking, devices are listening and brands are attempting to insert themselves into the conversation, using Amazon Alexa voice skills and Google […]

SMB Index: Local Stocks Make Gains in September

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After a flat month in August, the SCP SMB Index gained 2.1%, consistent with the S&P 500 and Dow Jones. Xero led the gainers, up 17.7% in the month of September, while GrubHub led the list of losers down 7.8% during September.

Is the Camera the ‘New Search Box’ for Local Discovery?

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Though still nascent, visual search builds on a few key trends. Smartphones have increasingly powerful optics; AI and machine learning support computer vision to identify items; and there’s behavioral alignment with millennials who use the smartphone camera as a communication tool.

Raise Report: Deliveroo, Urgently, Playbuzz Score New Funding

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Every two weeks, we round up some of the biggest fundraises taking place in hyperlocal marketing, commerce, and tech. This week’s edition includes funding for Synup, AtScale, FogHorn, and ViralGains.

LBMA Podcast: Denny’s, Ubimo, Ikea, GasBuddy

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This Week in Location Based Marketing is a weekly video podcast from the Location Based Marketing Association with Asif Khan and Aubriana Lopez. On the show: Ubimo, Verizon + Snapchat, Stratacache buys Walkbase, Ikea acquires TaskRabbit, CDecaux, American Airlines.

Street Fight Daily: Walmart Touts Free Shipping Ahead of Holidays, Amazon Dominates Server-to-Server

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Walmart to Emphasize Free Shipping, Dig at Amazon, In Pre-Holidays Campaigns… Amazon Is Dominating Server-to-Server Bidding… London Mayor Praises Uber CEO’s ‘Humility’ Regarding London Ban…

Why Brand Success Is About Unique Experiences and Community (And a Massive Audience)

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“Look at Amazon versus Walmart,” says GGV Capital’s Hans Tung.. “Amazon innovated much faster than Walmart. The way they approach things to make things happen fast, iterate, make changes, do a quick test, change again, test again, change again – that kind of speed is what we look for.”

Time to Take a Deep Breath — Local News Isn’t Becoming ‘Extinct’

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The editors in charge of the slimmed-down newsrooms of local pure-plays know how to leverage technology, data and other information to produce coverage that, in some cases, is superior to what was produced in the so-called “golden” age of print.