News and Analysis
Coronavirus and Mobile Advertising: CPMs, Sensitivity, Geographic Comparisons
The Covid-19 crisis is a challenging time for all industries, but for mobile marketers it poses a paradoxical challenge. On the one hand, people are on their phones and engaging with media as much as ever. On the other hand, the economic downturn is putting a strain on marketing budgets, employees are working from home, and messaging during a public health crisis requires unusual sensitivity.
Brian Bowman, CEO of social marketing and user acquisition firm Customer Acquisition, provided Street Fight his takes on the current state of the mobile ad market, where it’s headed in the coming weeks, and how advertisers can approach their work with consideration for the difficulty of these times.
Street Fight’s April Theme: Local Commerce in the Time of Coronavirus
We’ll devote coverage this month to the virus’ continued outbreak and its effect on local business. Of course, the airwaves and ether are already filled with pandemic coverage, and we won’t look to compete with that. Rather, we’ll be writing specifically about the crisis’ impact on local commerce, marketing, and related subjects.
In fact, we’ve already gotten started. Our March theme of reputation management barely got off the ground before we and many of our contributors came to the realization that it didn’t really feel right to talk about anything other than Covid-19. Don’t worry, we’ll give reputation management an encore performance later in the year.
This Startup Is Helping Local Stores ID Customers During COVID-19
Chatbots are helping resolve customer service issues when businesses are closed and call centers are slammed, but brick-and-mortar stores are still struggling to adapt to an online-only business format. Pure play ecommerce outlets have spent years developing systems to manage transactions and verify customer identities, but most retailers on Main Street are accustomed to seeing shoppers in person and visually checking IDs.
A San Francisco-based startup called Persona is offering to help those local businesses adapt by giving away its online ID verification service for free during the COVID-19 crisis.
Commentary
Local Media Consortium Partners With IAS to Fight Web Ad Fraud
To fight the pervasive web fraud crisis, the Local Media Consortium, which represents more than 75 local news media companies with 1,700+ digital publications, is partnering with the global data firm Integral Ad Science (IAS), which each day measures and analyzes the quality of 500 billion media metrics.
Latest Posts
LBMA Podcast: Sam’s Club, Pizza Hut, and IHG’s Sasha Trifunac
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: Smart Water + Proxama, Google’s OTTO, InContext + Intel Capital, Tesco, LinkNYC to UK, Sue Bee Honey & InMarket, Bank of America, and Groupon buys Living Social.
Street Fight Daily: Brands Leverage Apple Search Ads, Yelp Struggles Internationally
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Big Brands Are Already Targeting Their Competitors with Apple Search Ads… Yelp, Struggling Internationally, Lays Off 175 In Sales and Marketing… Foursquare Licenses Drawbridge’s Cross-Device Identity Data for Location Intelligence…
This Holiday Season, Brands Need to Pay Special Attention to Data Details
Many brands are already breaking out holiday decorations, hoping to attract the efficient crowds this early in the season. But glittery ornaments and fake snow only goes so far: 30% of local search users have cited “inaccurate” information as the issue they most frequently experience, and Google’s “near me” searches have increased 34-fold since 2011. Once the Brandify 360° Network completes initial listing corrections, the solution provides additional insights and value, such as pinpointing where online traffic originates from for specific listings and automating details to save time and energy for management.
Reimagining the Mobile Banner: In-App Ad Innovation Spares Brands from Google’s Interstitial Pinch
The future of our work is about designing smarter ways to reach users, so we need to focus on ways to drive engagement, not distraction. And that means finding subtle things that trigger the meaningful interactions. This isn’t 1999; we’re not building banners for last century’s desktop.
So, as January 10 approaches, let’s look at some creative models from the app side of the table
At Hearst Newspapers, a New Digital Strategy to End ‘Flying Blind’
Just how far local newspapers have to go to plant their flag commandingly in the fiercely competitive world of digital is summed up in a revealing story told by Robertson (Rob) Barrett, the new digital chief at Hearst Newspapers, who says that editors just don’t have information about the interests of the people in their market.
Street Fight Daily: Uber Redesigns App to Facilitate Location-Sharing, Yext Launches Developer Platform
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Uber Redesigns App to Streamline Ride Ordering, Facilitate Location-Sharing… Yext Launches a Developer Platform for Its Location Database Technology… Facebook Shares Sink as Company Announces Ad Revenue Growth Likely to Slow…
5 Ways Brands Are Using Wearables to Create Unique Marketing Moments
More than 250 million wearables are predicted to be in use by 2018. This presents an incredible opportunity for marketers looking to reach consumers not just based on their locations, but also based on their activity levels and personal interests. Here are five strategies that brand marketers are using.
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