News and Analysis
Charting the Rise of Conversational AI
Conversational AI is a broad term used to describe technologies that automate conversations and personalize customer experiences. With the right systems in place, brands are able to understand, process, and actually respond to voice inputs in a natural way. While voice assistants, chatbots, and messaging services like WhatsApp, Kik, and Facebook Messenger can all be harnessed in a conversational AI strategy, virtual assistants like Amazon’s Alexa and Apple’s Siri are the most popular tools adopted by brand marketers today.
How the Rise of Unbranded Search Upends Restaurant, Retail, and Grocery Strategy
Fueled by the growth of mobile and set to rocket even further north in coming years thanks to voice, unbranded searches like “burgers near me” or “Thai food” are growing as fast as 113% year over year, according to a fresh study by multi-location marketing firm MomentFeed. Unbranded search grew about 30% from 2016 to ’17 and 56% the following year before doubling pace in 2018-19, suggesting the slope of this trend’s adoption could get even steeper in coming years.
Valentine’s Day Boosts Entertainment, Food, and Social Apps
The data shows that Valentine’s Day marks a major uptick in app usage across verticals. Compared to an average February day last year, on Valentine’s Day, entertainment app usage was up 24%, food and drink apps 20%, and social 16%. Consumers also spent an unusual amount of time on transport (7%) and gaming (6%) apps.
Commentary
With Data and Local Guides, Google Maps Stays Ahead of the Rest
Justin O’Beirne marvels that, with the AOI initiative, Google has figured out how to “create data out of data,” meaning that AOIs are a mashup of 3D modeling and data extraction from images. Looked at more broadly, this is not the only example where Google has built features on top of features within the Maps universe.
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Street Fight Daily: Guardian to Sell Its Data, What Facebook’s Marketplace Lacks
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Guardian Moves to Separate Data from Inventory, with Monetization Model to Follow… Salesforce is Acquiring Krux to Boost its Data Management Capabilities… What Time Learned From the Small Sites It Acquired…
Street Culture: How RetailNext’s Growth Is Driven by Diversity
As the company has grown, according to CEO Alexei Agratchev, it has experienced two “productivity peaks,” where fewer people are doing a huge amount of work. Then new hires are brought on, and the productivity stays about the same for a few months as the growth potential is realized. This can be a frustrating cycle to manage.
Case Study: Aerial Entertainment Company Turns Late-Night Web Browsing Into Booking Opportunities
kayla Dyches has been able to capitalize on her unique line of work to get free press in local publications, but still says the best way to promote her upcoming classes is still with paid online advertising. She runs paid ads on Facebook and Instagram every two to three months to promote her circus arts classes.
Yext Integrates With Uber as Local On-Demand Becomes More Ubiquitous
With the new integration, clients of Yext’s Location Cloud for listings and local site management can let their customers book an Uber ride to their store from a local website, app, or email campaign via a “Ride with Uber” button. Once the customer catches a ride, the business can show an offer or other information to the rider.
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Beyond Likes: Win Hearts with Emotional Marketing