News and Analysis
CTV Budgets Keep Growing, Trust Still Hasn’t Caught Up.
Connected TV has won the budget battle. Now it must win the credibility battle. As marketers demand stronger evidence of business impact, measurement, not inventory, is emerging as the industry’s next competitive battleground. New research from performance CTV platform JamLoop suggests the industry’s biggest obstacle is no longer adoption but trust. While half of marketers […]
Multi-Location Growth Is Becoming an Operating Platform
When reports surfaced that Inspire Brands had confidentially filed for an initial public offering, much of the attention focused on valuation, revenue, and the scale of a restaurant company operating more than 33,000 locations across Arby’s, Buffalo Wild Wings, Dunkin’, Jimmy John’s, SONIC Drive-In, and Baskin-Robbins. The more interesting story, however, is the collection of […]
Hyper-Local Cultural Moments Are Changing Media Strategy
National campaigns are no longer enough to connect with local audiences. As brands shift toward hyper-local media planning, cultural moments like Pride offer a blueprint for how localized execution can drive more authentic engagement and stronger marketing outcomes. National brands have long relied on centralized media strategies to deliver consistent campaigns across every market. But […]
Commentary
The Local Media Paradox: Turning Community Trust into Measurable Confidence
Despite commanding some of the highest levels of consumer trust in media, local media continues to lose brand advertising budgets to platforms with far weaker audience relationships. The problem isn’t reach or relevance, but an inability to measure and communicate the value of trust in terms brands can buy. Local media owns something the rest […]
Google’s New AI Search Rules Create a Challenge for MULO Brands
Google recently published its first official guide to optimizing websites for generative AI Search features. For single-location businesses, the guidance is fairly straightforward. For multi-location brands (MULOs), the same principles apply, but the complexity of executing them scales dramatically with every location you add. Here’s what the guide says, and what it actually means if you’re […]
Why MULO Brands Are Investing More in Creator-Led Marketing
Creator-led marketing is rapidly evolving from an experimental tactic into a core component of many brands’ growth strategies. As consumers spend more time with creator-generated content and place greater trust in peer recommendations than traditional advertising, marketers are increasingly turning to creators as a scalable channel for customer acquisition, engagement, and brand building. The trend […]
Latest Posts
Basis and Cint Want Brand Metrics to Matter Before Campaigns End
Digital advertising has long operated with two separate measurement systems. On one side sit performance metrics such as clicks, conversions, cost per acquisition (CPA), and return on ad spend (ROAS). These indicators provide near real-time visibility into campaign activity and allow marketers to optimize media while campaigns are running. On the other side are brand […]
Google’s New AI Search Rules Create a Challenge for MULO Brands
Google recently published its first official guide to optimizing websites for generative AI Search features. For single-location businesses, the guidance is fairly straightforward. For multi-location brands (MULOs), the same principles apply, but the complexity of executing them scales dramatically with every location you add. Here’s what the guide says, and what it actually means if you’re […]
The Goddard School Is Changing How Franchise Marketing Gets Done
Growth creates a unique challenge for franchise organizations. Every new location expands revenue opportunities, but it also adds complexity. More locations mean more local marketing channels to manage, more reviews to monitor, more business listings to maintain, and more customer interactions that require attention. At a certain point, growth itself begins to change how marketing […]
What Yelp’s Fastest-Growing Brands Reveal About Consumer Behavior
Every year, lists of the fastest-growing brands offer more than a snapshot of corporate success. They provide insight into what consumers increasingly value, how preferences are evolving, and where demand is moving next. Yelp’s 2026 Fastest-Growing Brands report does exactly that. Based on growth in consumer engagement across the Yelp platform, the rankings highlight brands […]
Why MULO Brands Are Investing More in Creator-Led Marketing
Creator-led marketing is rapidly evolving from an experimental tactic into a core component of many brands’ growth strategies. As consumers spend more time with creator-generated content and place greater trust in peer recommendations than traditional advertising, marketers are increasingly turning to creators as a scalable channel for customer acquisition, engagement, and brand building. The trend […]
Why the World Cup Is Really Thousands of Local Marketing Moments
The biggest mistake brands make when approaching the FIFA World Cup is treating it as a single media event for local marketing. In reality, the tournament is thousands of simultaneous local moments unfolding across cities, neighborhoods, bars, restaurants, transit hubs, streaming platforms, and cultural communities. For agencies, media companies, and multi-location brands, that distinction may […]
Nielsen and Mediaocean Bring Advanced Audiences Into Linear TV’s Core Workflow
For years, advanced audience targeting has been one of the biggest promises in TV advertising. The challenge has never been defining sophisticated audience segments—it has been carrying those audiences consistently from planning and buying through measurement and reporting. That is the problem Nielsen and Mediaocean are now attempting to solve. The companies announced a new […]
Walmart and Magnite Signal Retail Media’s Next Phase
Walmart’s new partnership with Magnite may signal a broader shift in how retail media networks operate. Rather than requiring advertisers to work within retailer-controlled ecosystems, companies are increasingly looking to make their first-party data available across the platforms agencies already use. For multi-location brands and agencies, the move points toward a more interoperable future for […]
Why MULOs Need a Localized Unstructured Citation Strategy
Citation management for multi-location businesses has long been a structured affair, consisting of claiming listings for each location, ensuring NAP data is up to date and consistent across those listings, and repeating for every location in the portfolio. These types of structured citations still matter for local SEO, but with the advent of AI-powered search, […]
What the FBI’s DOOH Strategy Teaches Marketers
Digital out-of-home (DOOH) advertising has traditionally been viewed as a channel for building brand awareness, driving store visits, and influencing purchase decisions. But one of its longest-running use cases highlights a different strength: its ability to generate real-world action quickly and at scale. The Out of Home Advertising Association of America (OAAA) recently announced the […]
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