News and Analysis
How Viewers Watch the Super Bowl—And Its Ads
Even the Super Bowl does not make for entertaining enough television to get today’s fickle viewers to glue their eyes on the big screen and set cellphones aside. During the game, viewers also text (29%), play mobile games (28%), and browse social media apps (27%), mobile firm AdColony found in a global survey.
The numbers may even seem low; it seems fair to bet more than one in three viewers takes an eye off the game to text a friend. But AdColony manager of strategy and planning Gabriella Stano Aversa said marketers should not treat the multiscreen environment as a dilemma, seeing it rather as an opportunity.
Do Cashierless Stores Present a Privacy Risk to Consumers?
Amazon’s convenience stores rely heavily on location technology to track consumers’ movements inside buildings. Cameras analyze shopping behaviors, strategically placed microphones listen to conversations, and information about consumers’ shopping habits is stored in a central database that Amazon can reference for future operational and strategic planning.
“As cashierless stores take off, more and more personal and payment data will be transmitted through phones and mobiles devices and stored in cloud-based software platforms,” says Ruston Miles, chief strategy officer at Bluefin. “This means that hackers will have more network access to this data through vulnerable providers and merchants.”
Why and How Often Consumers Share Location Data
Location is among the types of data consumers are most likely to weigh disclosing based on the utility of the scenario. Asked about eight different types of data, including marital status, social security number, and physical address, a higher percentage of survey respondents said whether they’ll share location data “depends” on the situation than for any other category. It’s neither an automatic yes or no; companies need to make a case.
Commentary
The New Local Ecosystem: An Interview With Darren Shaw
As of this year, the task of updating the Local Search Ecosystem has been handed to Darren Shaw of Whitespark, who also inherited David Mihm’s other well-known brainchild, the Local Search Ranking Factors report. Last week, Darren released Local Search Ecosystem 2017, a bold departure in visual design and a much-needed update to the last edition, from 2014.
Google Elevates Local Marketing to Prime Time
Many industry watchers and practitioners correctly perceived the GMB API as a sign of how important it is for businesses to manage their location data properly. But the progression of the API represents something even bigger: empowering businesses to elevate and measure the value of local search marketing.
Cultural Shifts Underlines Google’s Local Enterprise Play
“Google at one time talked about a suite of GMB products called the Business Builder but it got left on the cutting room floor of the forced march to Google Plus and the subsequent ugly separation,” Mike Blumenthal tells David Mihm. “It’s refreshing to see a similar strategy finally coming to fruition. I think we are seeing them being slowly tied together.”
Latest Posts
Street Fight Daily: Marketing Tech Brings in Big Bucks, Consumers Still Unsure About Mobile Wallets
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Why Venture Capitalists Are Betting on Marketing Tech Over Ad Tech… How Connected Cars Are Turning Into Revenue-Generating Machines… Brands Debate Pros and Cons of Reaching Consumers via WhatsApp…
TripAdvisor Acquires Social Mapping Service CityMaps
TripAdvisor has announced the acquisition of New York-based social mapping startup CityMaps. The company launched in 2010 as map-based aggregator of third-party data and later evolved into a navigational tool and guide for travelers. TripAdvisor spokesman said the company will continue to operate as a standalone business.
How Dashboards Are Shaping the Way Marketers Manage Local Campaigns
Vendors are pulling out all the stops to help small and mid-size businesses acquire and retain a higher percentage of their customers. And as merchants increase the number of platforms they use for local promotions, they’re relying more heavily on dashboards to correlate their digital efforts with financial successes.
A Promising New Start on News Collaboration, but There’s Another Non-Starter as Well
Next week, the Center for Cooperative Media at Montclair State University in suburban North Jersey will launch a local/national partnership project that could promote collaboration between news organizations. Meanwhile, a newspaper in Milwaukee could benefit from this kind of collaboration.
Street Fight Daily: Instagram Boosts Brands’ Customer Service, AI-Powered Assistants on the Rise
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Useful for Social and Marketing, Instagram Now Helps Brands with Customer Service, Too… NuTonomy Debuts Self-Driving Cabs, Beating the Likes of Uber and Google to the Punch… Digital Media Specialist Warns Against the Hazards of ‘Over-Targeting’…
Independent Agencies Are Getting Boxed Out of Adtech