News and Analysis

Why Contextual Ads Are Generating More Interest

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Increased attention to consumer privacy is shifting the way advertisers do business. One of these shifts is the increased embrace of contextual advertising, which shows Internet users ads based on the content of the sites they’re searching, not based on their previous digital activity.

I checked in with John Clavadetscher, president and chief commercial officer at Cooler Screens, for more on why brands are taking up contextual ads and what benefits the format offers.

Amperity Adapts as Covid Raises the Bar for CDPs

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The work of customer data platforms has gotten a great deal more complicated in the Covid-19 era. Budgets have tightened, privacy standards are rising, the shift to e-commerce has accelerated, and brands are asking for more.

CDP Amperity unveiled an updated platform today to meet those challenges. Matthew Lubeck, VP and head of product at the company, spoke to Street Fight about the company’s updated platform and the challenges the CDP industry is facing now.

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How Burbio Is Turning Calendar Events Into School Reopening Data

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Data for Burbio’s School Opening Tracker comes from more than 150,000 school and community calendars. Burbio is actively monitoring millions of events in these calendars, representing more than 35,000 schools, including the 200 largest school districts in the U.S. Events are dynamically updated daily and targeted to the zip code level. This allows retailers, brand marketers, and investors to quickly pick up on emerging trends—like schools in certain zip codes beginning to reopen for in-person learning—so they can make smarter business decisions based on local schooling data in real-time.

Commentary

How Business Reviews Contribute to Local SEO

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Local businesses need to pay attention to the reviews that they are getting to make sure that they have an optimized online presence. Reviews definitely play a part in a business’ local SEO, and they also help improve customer interaction and CTR.

Does Google Really Need a Social Network to Succeed at Local?

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“The driving vision of Google’s entire local arc is to be able to give a single eyes-free answer to any query with local intent. Social features like reviews, Guides, business owner data, and Q&A are just the means to that end,” writes David Mihm in his biweekly column with Mike Blumenthal.

Performance Partnerships: A Better Way to Define Affiliate Marketing

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Performance Partnerships can only exist within a CPA model because the partners win and lose together. This isn’t the case with many of the other channels labeled as performance marketing. Performance Partnerships include everything that people want in their affiliate relationships and exclude all that is undesirable.

Latest Posts

Research Roundup: Comparing Franchisees and Independent Professionals

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Comparing some surveys focused at opposite ends of the local small business spectrum — franchise operators and self-employed professionals — it feels like, though the industry is selling these groups the same marketing and commerce technology and services, the two segments are more different than similar.

Optimizing for Mobile Search: New Tips and Old Tricks

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It used to be that you wanted to be situated as close as possible to the city centroid, or clustered with similar businesses. Now you might literally have to be the closest shop to the place your potential customer happens to be standing. How in the world do you optimize for that?

Brand Battle: Wireless Phone Companies Face Off

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To gauge how each company approaches local marketing, Brandify’s proprietary technology analyzed AT&T’s and Verizon’s store locations with focus on areas of local presence management. 4,903 AT&T locations and 4,000 Verizon locations were included in the data sample.

Street Fight Daily: Amazon’s Brick-and-Mortar Ambitions, Uber Suspends Self-Driving Cars After Crash

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Google’s YouTube Has Continued Showing Objectionable Ads Despite Advertiser Pushback… Uber Takes Self-Driving Cars Off the Road After One Flips Over in Arizona… Amazon’s Ambitions Unboxed: Brick-and-Mortar Stores for Appliances, Furniture, and More…

Why the Creative Director of the Future Stands at the Crossroads of Marketing, Tech, Product, and Ads

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Think of the evolving creative director as a technological and marketing pentathlete, a dynamic force who’ll need to satisfy more than just the traditional advertising imperative. Envision a product-strategy role; that is the model to come.

Raise Report: Flow, Databerries, PlateIQ Secure 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 new funding for EVRYTHING, Helpling, Drivemode, and Lynkos.

Street Fight Daily: Uber’s Secret Tools Undercut Competitors, Marketers Take on Google

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… ShopTalk ’17: Retail Brands Focus on Amazon ‘Work-Arounds’… Uber Employees Still Use Secret Tools to Target Drivers and Undercut Competition… Opportunity Knocks: Marketers and Media Take On Google…

Voice Bots Have One Big Problem: Human Behavior

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We’re surely moving in the direction of voice input to bots, but unless microphones advance — allowing you to request things with a near-silent whisper (or perhaps with thoughts) — people will continue to let their fingers do the talking.

How Local News Publishers Can Make Revenue and Engagement a Single and Successful Strategy

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Too often, local news publishers are given an either-or — either focus on growing revenue or on making deeper connections with users. Relay Media’s head of product Barb Palser believes publishers can do both at the same time.

Street Fight Daily: Facebook Recommends Local Businesses, Google Maps Supercharges Location Sharing

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Facebook Tests an Enhanced Local Search and Discovery Feature Offering Business Suggestions… Google Maps Supercharges Location Sharing, Begins Drooling Over Your Data… AT&T, Verizon Pull Ads from Google Over ‘Hate’ Videos…