News and Analysis

Square and Adobe Spark Team Up to Give SMBs a Holiday Marketing Boost

Share this:

In addition to selecting three small businesses to receive a holiday marketing overhaul — pairing each up with local designers to modernize their brand marketing materials — Adobe Spark and Square are helping businesses digitize their shops to process transactions in a touch-free environment, utilizing mobile technology and QR codes. The firms have also announced a plan to give five small businesses a $10,000 media buy credit and a subscription to Adobe Spark Premium.

This E-commerce Startup Is Helping DTC Brands Navigate the Pandemic

Share this:

While other firms in the retail infrastructure and logistics space are struggling, Whitebox is closing on a Series B funding round of $18 million. CEO Marcus Startzel says timing has played a key role in his company’s success. Whitebox was focused on solving e-commerce challenges for brands before the pandemic began, but the opportunities to work with major brands to improve and automate the e-commerce process have only grown over the past few months.

Has Covid Killed the Single-Day Sale?

Share this:

Limited-time offers and one-day sales are a mainstay of the holiday shopping season. But this year is unlike any other, and retailers are taking a different approach.

With Covid-19 restrictions limiting the number of customers who can be inside a store at any given time, retailers are looking at extending the shopping season to accommodate socially distant crowds.

Commentary

Stronger Bklyner Helps Keep ‘News Desert’ at Bay in NYC’s Biggest Borough

Share this:

In this Q&A, Liena Zagare tells how Bklyner came back from the abyss this year and why, after flipping her business model to rely on her readers for revenue, she’s confident the digital pure-play she founded and edits will stay strong and help maintain Brooklyn as a news oasis.

If We Only Opened Facebook’s App for ‘Time Well Spent,’ Would We Use It Much At All?

Share this:

If Facebook’s advertisers’ most coveted users are opening its app mainly to scroll through News Feed while waiting for lattés or click on the stray cat video, and if the company truly wants time spent on its app to be “time well spent,” does its core mission even have a viable future?

Location Targeting is Nothing Without the Facts to Back it Up

Share this:

Doing location targeting right is no simple matter, and common claims about it require further scrutiny. Accuracy of a location through parcel targeting, a rapid refresh audience strategy, and reaching the right people at scale through IP and cross-device targeting will make a major difference in location-based campaign outcomes.

Latest Posts

Street Fight Daily: Facebook at 10, Spotify Expands ‘Branded Moments’

Share this:

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Marketers Still Struggle with Measurement, Attribution… Brands Can Now Target Spotify Playlists Ads Based on the Time of Day… Uber Confirms Ford Veteran Marakby is Leaving After One Year…

Frustration With Digital Marketing Vendors Boils Over for One SMB

Share this:

If it’s possible to distill the 30 million small business owners in the U.S. into a single persona, Marc Reisner strikes our columnists as a great candidate: “Marc has been disillusioned by past performance and that poor performance has understandably tarred the entire industry with the same brush.”

7 Ways That Brands Can Make Chatbot Conversations More Authentic

Share this:

Chatbots are transforming the customer experience and quickly moving into new sectors — but before marketers can expect conversation-mimicking software and artificial intelligence to replace live customer service representatives, they’ll need to find ways to overcome some consumer obstacles.

Street Fight Daily: Uber Opens Up On Finances, Walmart In Talks to Buy Bonobos

Share this:

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Uber, Lifting Financial Veil, Says Sales Growth is Outpacing Losses… Walmart is in Advanced Talks to Acquire Online Men’s Retailer Bonobos… From ‘Zombie Malls’ to Bonobos: America’s Retail Transformation…

Street Culture: Why Telecommuting Makes Sense for Many Tech Startups

Share this:

“If you have the right team, the right employees, then they don’t have to be there physically,” says Kristen Stiles, co-founder and CEO of babysitter-finding app Sitter.me. “If you don’t trust your employees to work at home, you shouldn’t have hired them in the first place.”

How Brands Can Find the ‘Advertisable Moments’ They’re Missing

Share this:

Advertisable moments exist in a range of digital and physical contexts beyond TV sets and even beyond desktop browsers — and if a brand wants to capitalize on all available moments (especially those proverbial micro-moments) it has to look for ad opportunities in unexpected places.

Street Fight Daily: Google Uses Image Search for Retail, Instagram’s Snap Clone Surpasses Snap in Users

Share this:

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Google is Trying to Turn Image Search into a Shopping Tool… Instagram’s Snapchat Clone is Now More Popular than Snapchat… The Weather Company Opens Its Data Trove to Marketers on Outside Platforms…

Yext Shares Up Sharply in Initial Day of Trading, Portending Well for Local

Share this:

Yext’s shares jumped nearly 22% in the company’s initial day of trading, with the price rising as high as $14.25 per share before settling to $13.41 at close. The strong opening was a hopeful message from Wall Street for the local marketing industry, which has been looking to Yext’s IPO as a bellwether.

Are We on the Brink of a Retail Revolution?

Share this:

Revolutions often happen over short periods of time and leave death and carnage in their wake. What we are experiencing today in retail is more of an evolution — a sort of “survival of the fittest” as both local and big brand retailers either embrace shifting consumer shopping patterns or face extinction.

What We Talk About When We Talk About ‘Fake News’

Share this:

“Fake news” is actually about stories written to win clicks (and potentially do harm). Losing the focus on this accurate definition to spin and political jockeying creates a challenge for the business of marketers, advertisers, and publishers.