News and Analysis
Ridesharing Inches Forward as Industry Looks for New Path
Years of rising demand for ridesharing services came to a full stop this spring, as coronavirus spread and communities across the globe were put under lockdown. Now, as ridesharing services like Uber and Lyft begin inching their way forward toward a new normal, they’re looking at how to adapt to the completely new environment in which they find themselves.
MarTech Firms Pivot to Meet Post-Pandemic Demands
The marketing automation company Act-On Software is relaunching today with an affordable solution for companies that are bogged down by budget cuts and lay-offs due to Covid-19 shutdowns, but they’re not the only company making big changes.
In fact, Act-On is just one of a number of martech firms gunning to help businesses as they emerge from Covid-19 shutdowns. Jungle Scout has released a solution for brands leveraging the power of Amazon, Agora.io is expanding its reseller partnerships, and BounceX is using SMS to help retailers recover revenue lost because of Covid-19. Act-On is refining its approach to marketing automation, with new product capabilities meant to drive personal product engagement and a tighter focus on helping marketers evolve their businesses.
With Covid Insights Tracker, GroundTruth Looks to Democratize Location Data
GroundTruth’s new Covid-19 Insights tracker gives brands a way to track foot traffic down to the zip code level. The tracker is updated weekly, with the ability to search for daily foot traffic across a number of categories, like auto dealers, banks, restaurants, and retail.
Data comes from the 30 billion annual global visits GroundTruth observes on its platform. The company uses indexed foot traffic to demonstrate the relative increase or decrease in visits to different places of interest, with weekly and daily charts depicting foot traffic indexed against average weekly/daily visits starting from December 30, 2019.
Commentary
National Brands Must Take Advantage of Tech and Reap Benefits of Going Local
The marketplace is now offering media inventory that can be localized even in channels like national magazine titles. Advances in data management platforms, programmatic exchanges, and ad operations workflows allow national brands to go local at scale in order to reach customized audience segments.
How Augmented Reality Will Change Local SEO
Ultimately, local SEO is all about engagement, and AR helps brands engage customers. Incorporating AR also shows that your brand is not just up on trends but actually ahead of the curve.
Toward a Better Definition of AI in Internet Communications
Under broad scrutiny, AI stands for “that thing we do with computer data manipulation that is somehow more complicated than layering algorithms on to data structures. But neither do we agree that the current state of AI represents actual computer or machine learning.
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#SFSNYC: Why Location Data Management Needs Technology and Agency Services
At Street Fight Summit in New York on Tuesday, Brett Fritz, VP of business development at digital performance marketing company DAC Group, spoke about why marketing and location data management should be done by a mix of agency work and technology.
Street Fight Daily: Google Gets Lift from Maps Ads, Facebook’s E-Commerce Strategy
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Google Sees Lift from Maps Ads, Local Mobile Clicks… Facebook Puts Off Monetization of E-Commerce Efforts to Boost their Popularity… BloomReach Acquires Hippo to Create, Personalize, and Measure Every Digital Experience…
#SFSNYC: Soleo Announces Version 2.0 of Local Search API
The local search company announced the launch of its new Local Search API at Street Fight Summit 2016, opening it up to developers to start using in their own projects. This new version brings together natural language processing and its database of over 20 million business listings.
#SFSNYC: How Marketers Are Closing in on the Holy Grail of Mobile Attribution
“What’s super interesting is the fact that we now have a bridge between the digital and physical world,” said Foursquare’s Steven Rosenblatt, talking about how this new rise in data makes it much easier to see what’s going on down to the hyperlocal level.
#SFSNYC: How Local Tech Companies Can Reach Scale in the SMB Ecosystem
Creating new technology for the SMB space is one thing; trying to achieve any sort of scale is something entirely different. Companies either need to bring on a large sales force to go door to door or they need to partner with one of the much larger companies in the space.
The Increasing Impact of Reviews and Google+ (?!) on Local SEO
Some new data has given us some “big time insight” into how Google is using authoritative local sites to inform local search rankings, says David Mihm. Mike Blumenthal agrees, saying that the prominence of local review pages and appears to be “transferring prominence directly to the local entity in a way that is totally independent of links.”
Local Listings Get a Real-Time Update from Brandify
The company’s new digital marketing platform combines the power of tech with the authority of the human brain. Brandify’s Nip Zalavadia, says the platform has the capability to access and analyze huge amounts of data, but also uses real people to address details that often fall through the cracks of automated software solutions.
How Lawyers Capture & Convert Clients
No longer a taboo, law firms are aggressively using digital channels to recruit clients, in response to changes in consumer behavior. According to a survey by FindLaw, 74% of prospects who begin their searches online end up contacting their choice firms via phone. Eighty-six percent of consumers start their online research with search engines, and a small-but-growing 3% relies on social media.
Street Fight Daily: Apple to Report Revenue Drop, Reviews Increasingly Impact Search
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Apple Expected to Report First Drop in Annual Revenue Since 2001… From East Coast to West Coast: The Company Behind Miami’s The New Tropic Expands to Seattle… To Dunkin’ Donuts, Media is More Than Just New User Acquisition…
New Report Shows Urban SMBs Do Better with Agency Help
Street Fight’s new analysis, The Urban SMB Report, indicates that local business owners in big cities get better results from their digital marketing efforts by not doing it themselves. The more they outsource, either to internal staff or to an agency, the higher their satisfaction rating. But there is room for improvement.
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AI Won’t Fix Advertising – It May Scale Its Chaotic Nature