News and Analysis
MOLOCO Secures $150m in Series C Funding
The mobile app marketing company MOLOCO announced that it had raised $150 million in Series C funding. Tiger Global Management led the round.
Retailers Implement Hybrid Shopping Experiences to Adapt to Covid Disruption
The so-called “buy and return loop” that stores faced during the height of the pandemic is back, and it’s a major burden for fashion retailers across the country. According to Britt Mills, senior director of customer experience at the digital consultancy Mobiquity, more shoppers are being forced to skip the dressing room due to in-store safety protocols, and since they can’t try on items, that leads to a higher likelihood of returns.
Retailers on Edge as Delta Variant Spreads
School supplies and backpacks should be flying off the shelves right now, but growing concerns over the Covid-19 Delta variant are prompting more families to hold off on back-to-school shopping and make essential purchases online.
Commentary
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.
LBMA Vidcast: Kroger Partners with Pinterest
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.
Latest Posts
Street Fight Daily: Brands Make Best of AR, Facebook Boosts Brand Intelligence
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… How Brands Are Using AR to Engage Consumers and Measure Results… Facebook Lets Brands Dive Into People’s Posts… Yext for Food Makes Menus Visible in Searches on Google, Facebook, Bing…
How Brands Are Using Hyperlocal Marketing to Reach Millennial Shoppers
Members of the millennial generation—generally defined as those born between 1982 and 2004—are more comfortable receiving targeted digital ads than consumers in other generations, and they’re warming to technologies like NFC and mobile payments. Here’s how five brands have targeted millennials with location-based strategies, along with insights into what made their tactics so successful.
Voice Assistants Could Transform Local — But Not Necessarily How You Might Think
Voice search and AI are widely misunderstood. Generalist tech coverage has painted the picture of an opportunity that resides mostly with stationary devices like Amazon Echo. But the real scale will happen elsewhere.
Street Fight Daily: Facebook Adds Food Ordering, Apple Throws Advertisers a Curve Ball
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Facebook Adds Food-Ordering Feature… Publishers Are Already Feeling Pain from Apple’s Move Against Ad Tracking… Mobile-Ordering Apps Trouble Restaurants…
Street Culture: Female Leaders at Main Street Hub Highlight Group Dynamics and Diversity in Communication
At marketing automation and CRM company Main Street Hub, the product engineering team has grown from six people to 30 in three years. The entire company employs more than 500 people, so in the product, engineering, and design department, the leadership is proud of the diversity and success they have achieved.
LBMA Podcast: Casper, Urgent.ly, Samsung, PlaceIQ
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: ComScore, Swarovski, KFC, Target with Pinterest. Special Guest: Herve Utheza – Here Technologies.
Street Fight Daily: Google Builds an Anti-Amazon Retail Alliance, Inside the War on Delivery
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Target Takes Voice-Activated Shopping Nationwide with Google, Joining Walmart… How Walmart, Amazon, Target, and Others Are Fighting to Forge Best Delivery Practices… Lyft Will Use Google Maps as Default Navigator for Drivers…
Brands Aren’t Effectively Planning for Personalization and Segmentation Ahead of the Holidays
A report from B2C marketing and analytics company Zaius shows that many companies, though they claim to be spotlighting personalization and segmentation as a way to engage customers, are actually not capably following through.
JustPremium CEO Details Industry Campaign Against Ads That Users Hate
Among the most hated by both desktop and mobile users are pop-ups, auto-play videos with sound and large sticky ads. The Coalition for Better Ads, which includes many members of the ad industry, trade associations and a few news publishers, is developing new standards to give users a better experience when they encounter an ad message.
Street Fight Daily: Clothing Brands Use AI to Boost Mobile Sales, BuzzFeed Innovates on Ads
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… How Fashion and Beauty Brands Use AI to Drive Mobile Purchases (Digiday) Working with personalization platform Qubit, DvF set up an algorithm-based discovery feed on its mobile site that’s curated using artificial intelligence and tailored to each user. The feed reflects an assortment that changes, […]
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Meta Is Automating Ads, But Brands Still Face a Bigger Problem