News and Analysis
Survey: What Marketers Want from Location Data
Marketers surveyed showed an especially keen interest in understanding how they can integrate location data with other kinds of information. Asked how they deploy location data, 27% said it’s a “key component of a broader strategy to map the customer journey online and offline.” Twenty-six percent, the second-largest segment, said they were interested in learning how to marshal location data in conjunction with other data to achieve more advanced goals than their current practices allow.
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.
Commentary
Local Marketing on Alexa? The Real Estate Industry Gives It a Shot
There are almost 40 real estate “skills” currently listed in Alexa’s directory. This is greater than those related to lawyers/attorneys, doctors/dentists, and a host of other SMB categories, and overall there doesn’t yet appear to be much adoption of voice technology at the local business level.
Why Carrier Data Is the Key to Unlocking Mobile Verification
Brands like P&G are placing new demands on agencies and media providers for increased transparency and accountability, which in turn has led to significant advances in areas like viewability. The next battleground is clearly verifying the data accuracy of the underlying ingredients – namely the quality of data used for targeting and measurement.
Latest Posts
As Google Pushes for Users to Stay on Its Platform, What Are the Effects for Local Search
“Obviously Google still controls a fair bit of the searcher’s pre-purchase mindshare, and they obviously want to retain that role,” writes Mike Blumenthal. “They are also fighting like crazy to be relevant in a world where 50% (and growing) of users’ total digital media time is spent in Apps.”
Street Fight Daily: Amazon Warehouses Spreading Rapidly, Google Adds More Ride Services to Maps
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… New Amazon Data From Wall Street Should Terrify All Retail Stores in the US… Google Adds Lyft and Gett to Taxi Options on Maps… How Publishers Can Help Brands Navigate the Content Marketing Crossroads…
Making Sense of the Mobile Marketing Spending Disparity
Consumers’ relationships with media and mobile devices have changed. Advertising needs to change as well. The responsibility is with advertisers and their agencies and service providers to demand the granularity and specificity that you can only achieve with the targeted data you get from mobile advertising.
As 10-Year Mark Approaches, West Seattle Blog Sticks to Profitable Basics
In December 2005, West Seattle Blog was a “personal project” with no news or advertising. A major windstorm that struck West Seattle and King County in December 2006 changed all that, and in the nearly 10 years since, WSB has become a highly regarded inspiration for independent digital community sites.
XPlenty CEO: Pokemon Go Data’s Usefulness Depends on Integration and Visualization Strategies
“It’s pretty difficult to get access to location data,” says Yaniv Mor. “There are quite a few companies today that are starting to provide products for smaller businesses that will help them take advantage of location data, but at this scale — hundreds of millions of users — that’s something that we haven’t seen yet.”
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