News and Analysis
Google Disables Reviews and Q&A, Yelp Announces New Features Amid Outbreak
Important announcements were posted Friday by Google and Yelp as part of the effort to contend with coronavirus and its impact on businesses.
Google has published a new help page titled “Limited Google My Business functionality due to COVID-19.” Before diving into the details in the announcement, I’ll mention the most important headline. Due to a rapid reorganization of priorities, Google has determined that at this time, they will disable the ability to leave new reviews, reply to reviews, and post new Question and Answer content.
These Chatbots Are Helping Brands Respond to Covid-19 Queries
Chatbots could help fill the gap in business-to-customer communication capacity during the Covid-19 outbreak. Although there will always be a need for human customer service agents, even when chatbots with AI are deployed, the coronavirus outbreak is demonstrating just how valuable this automated technology can be for brands working in a time of crisis. Already, chatbot companies like LivePerson say they’re seeing significant increases in volume on their platforms. As the pandemic widens, even more companies are likely to start integrating chatbots into their customer service systems.
Here are six chatbot solutions that brands can start using right away.
Tech Companies Respond as Workers, SMBs Face Covid-19 Pressure
Google’s sister site Verily launched a site, albeit with logistical difficulties, to help Bay Area residents find testing options, and Verily isn’t the only tech company facing or alleviating coronavirus concerns. As a possible recession looms, consumer spending dips, and employees are sent home for public safety, some vendors are stepping in to help workers weather the storm. Others are boosting small businesses, hiring and increasing pay for workers, and suspending precarious services.
Commentary
Where Local Agencies Help Brands Most
About a quarter of multi-location brands use local media agencies to help manage and evaluate their local digital advertising and marketing programs, according to Street Fight’s latest survey. There’s a modest correlation between using agencies and marketing effectiveness, and the agencies seem to help the most with TV and display advertising.
On the Various Challenges Facing European Publishers (and Some Solutions)
“As audiences age out, the number of print subscribers will plummet, and as older small business owners retire, old ways of doing business … retire with them as well,” David Mihm writes to Mike Blumenthal. “Legacy media companies that don’t evolve rapidly are going to be left with no audience and no customers.”
Is the Camera the ‘New Search Box’ for Local Discovery? Part II
It’s often said in the ad-tech world, and other sectors that are reliant on data, that “Content is King, but Data is God.” This is increasingly true in local ad-tech and martech given the need for “ground-truth” conversions to attribute ROI. And it will equally apply in local AR.
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LBMA Podcast: Lyft, Klosebuy, Homebase and Indoor Atlas
Welcome to This Week in Location Based Marketing, a weekly video podcast from the Location Based Marketing Association with Asif Khan and Aubriana Lopez. On the show: PetSmart + MoodMedia, MediaMath + Factual, Pinterest, Be The Match + Snapchat.
Street Fight Daily: Uber Racks Up Big Losses, Businesses Coming to WhatsApp
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Uber Loses At Least $1.2 Billion in First Half of 2016… WhatsApp to Let Business Operate on its Platform… Major Quick-Serve Restaurant Deploys Drones for Food Delivery…
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’…
Pitney Bowes MD: Data Integration Sets the Best Location Companies Apart
What makes location data actionable and location-based marketing effective — and what do recent success stories like Pokemon Go foretell for the location data industry? Street Fight recently caught up with Joe Francica, managing director of geospatial solutions at Pitney Bowes, to talk about the best practices in location data.
Bringing Brands Into the Fold, inMarket Touts Its ‘Three-Sided’ Beacon Network
inMarket’s strategic product is not the app, the value is created by their network. Their network links dozens of publishers’ apps to retailers that host inMarket beacons and, the third stakeholder in the network, the brands, whose products are being promoted. In this video, CEO Todd DiPaola talks about the importance of this network.
Street Fight Daily: Google to Penalize Intrusive Mobile Ads, Facebook Improves Slideshow Ads
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… As Mobile Ads Grow More Crucial, Google Pledges to Crack Down on ‘Intrusive Interstitials’… Facebook Improves Its ‘Lightweight Video’ Slideshow Ads, Provides Support for Mobile Ad Creation… Most U.S. Publishers Rely on Both Ad Support, Subscriptions…
Factual’s Rob Jonas: Location Tech Still Has Some Big Problems to Solve
Factual has been working over the past year to build out location data partnerships with a variety of agencies and brands. We recently caught up with Rob Jonas, the company’s SVP of revenue, to talk about where Factual sees local heading and why the location data space isn’t as crowded as general adtech.
7 Ways National Brands Can Localize Email Marketing Campaigns
Going local with an email campaign can be as simple as segmenting lists by city and including the addresses of local stores or as involved as editing the copy to reflect regional purchasing trends and language dialects. The end goal remains the same: to ground the business in the local community and give customers a sense of trust.
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Meta Is Automating Ads, But Brands Still Face a Bigger Problem