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
The Inside Story on the GMB App Rebuild
Damian Rollison: Google’s Curtis Galloway, software engineering manager from the Google My Business app team, offered a fascinating peek into that team’s development process this week in a presentation at LSA19 in Dana Point, California. Galloway’s presentation revealed aspects of Google’s user-oriented focus when revising the app as well as its customer-centric orientation.
AR in Local Commerce: Google Shows the Way
Mike Boland: A recent and relatively understated development from Google could portend the future of augmented reality. Its previously teased “VPS” was released into the wild for a small set of users. For those unfamiliar, VPS (visual positioning service) guides users with 3D overlays on upheld smartphone screens. Sort of a cousin of AR, this type of experience could represent the sector’s eventual killer apps. Though we’ve seen the most AR success so far in gaming (Pokemon Go) and social (Snapchat AR lenses), it could be more mundane utilities like navigation that engender high-frequency use cases.
Latest Posts
Street Fight Daily: Facebook Wants Brands on Messenger, Adobe Courts Retailers
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Facebook Is Adding More Advertising Objectives for Brands Using Messenger… Adobe Wants to Make Every Online Retailer More Analytical… Publishers Want More Data, Monetization Options from Facebook, Google, and Apple…
Understanding How Google Measures Store Visits
Even though ecommerce is growing and brick-and-mortar retail is arguably in the midst of a slow decline, 90% of consumer dollars are still spent in physical stores, and the intent of Google’s store visits data is to help demonstrate the efficacy of multiple online touchpoints that might drive consumers into a store.
Street Fight Daily: Walmart Tests Grocery Delivery, YouTube Rolls Out Marketing Tool
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Walmart Partners with Deliv to Test Grocery Delivery Direct to Fridge… YouTube Uses Data to Create Thousands of Ads from Assets in One Video Campaign… Why Brands Continue to Invest in Digital Advertising Despite Industry Roadblocks…
Beyond Likes: Win Hearts with Emotional Marketing