News and Analysis
What Yelp’s Fastest-Growing Brands Reveal About Consumer Behavior
Every year, lists of the fastest-growing brands offer more than a snapshot of corporate success. They provide insight into what consumers increasingly value, how preferences are evolving, and where demand is moving next. Yelp’s 2026 Fastest-Growing Brands report does exactly that. Based on growth in consumer engagement across the Yelp platform, the rankings highlight brands […]
Why the World Cup Is Really Thousands of Local Marketing Moments
The biggest mistake brands make when approaching the FIFA World Cup is treating it as a single media event for local marketing. In reality, the tournament is thousands of simultaneous local moments unfolding across cities, neighborhoods, bars, restaurants, transit hubs, streaming platforms, and cultural communities. For agencies, media companies, and multi-location brands, that distinction may […]
Nielsen and Mediaocean Bring Advanced Audiences Into Linear TV’s Core Workflow
For years, advanced audience targeting has been one of the biggest promises in TV advertising. The challenge has never been defining sophisticated audience segments—it has been carrying those audiences consistently from planning and buying through measurement and reporting. That is the problem Nielsen and Mediaocean are now attempting to solve. The companies announced a new […]
Commentary
The Website Is No Longer the Center of Local Discovery
For years, multi-location brands built local marketing around a fairly simple model. A customer searched, clicked a result, visited the website, and made a decision from there. Visibility was measured through rankings and traffic. Persuasion was expected to happen on the site. Performance was judged largely by what could be tracked after the click. That […]
AI Made Marketing Faster. It Also Made It Harder to Control.
Generative AI is accelerating creative production, but it’s also making performance harder to control. As more teams generate more assets, consistency drifts and optimization becomes less clear. The next phase of AI in marketing isn’t about speed … it’s about structure. For midsize marketing teams, generative AI has unlocked unprecedented speed. Campaigns that once took […]
Why AI Describes Locations Differently
Picture two locations of the same quick-service restaurant brand, both in the same metro area, both with solid review scores, both with optimized Google Business Profiles. Yet when you ask ChatGPT to recommend a spot in each of their respective neighborhoods, one location gets highlighted at the beginning of the AI-generated response with specific dish […]
Latest Posts
What If You Could Target Mindset, Not Just Location?
As identity signals fade, brands and agencies are being forced to rethink how they target and convert audiences at scale. Seedtag’s NeuroX introduces a new approach, using AI to understand mindset not just location, potentially reshaping how local campaigns drive measurable outcomes. If you are a multi-location brand looking to interact with customers while they’re […]
TikTok Campaign Shows How Brands Turn Reach Into Real Traffic
TikTok is no longer just a discovery engine—it’s becoming a measurable traffic driver for multi-location brands. A new Camp Bow Wow case study shows how native creative and intent-based targeting can turn reach into cost-efficient site visits at scale, signaling a broader shift in how agencies should be thinking about social performance. A growing number […]
Why AI Describes Locations Differently
Picture two locations of the same quick-service restaurant brand, both in the same metro area, both with solid review scores, both with optimized Google Business Profiles. Yet when you ask ChatGPT to recommend a spot in each of their respective neighborhoods, one location gets highlighted at the beginning of the AI-generated response with specific dish […]
Reviews Are Now a Growth System for Multi-Location Brands
For years, many multi-location brands treated reviews as a reputation issue. Something to monitor. Something to clean up. Something to escalate when a location had a public problem. That framing is outdated. Reviews now sit much closer to performance than many brands still acknowledge. They influence whether a customer trusts a location enough to call, book, […]
3D DOOH Goes Local: How Brands Are Driving Store Visits Faster
3D DOOH is shifting from brand awareness to a measurable local performance channel. With faster production and built-in mobile retargeting, campaigns can now drive store visits and conversions at scale across locations. Are we ready for 3D, “Pixar-quality” digital billboards? Big Happy thinks we are and have built a 3D DOOH platform that can scale […]
AI-Driven Media Quality Signals Move Into Campaign Activation
Media quality and performance optimization are moving closer to the point of execution. A new integration between Basis and Protected by Mediaocean is embedding real-time, AI-driven verification, attention, and quality signals directly into campaign activation—reflecting a broader shift toward outcome-based media decisioning. Basis and Mediaocean have announced a direct integration that brings Protected by Mediaocean’s […]
Brand Ad Spend Is Moving Into Mobile Apps
Brand advertising is shifting beyond the open web—and mobile apps are emerging as a key destination. LoopMe’s launch of Chartboost Direct reflects that transition, introducing infrastructure designed to connect brand demand directly with in-app inventory at scale. LoopMe announced Chartboost Direct as a solution to help mobile app publishers access brand advertising demand more directly, […]
AI Won’t Fix Advertising – It May Scale Its Chaotic Nature
Once again, the advertising industry is in the midst of a technological gold rush. The current hype around AI reflects a familiar pattern: sweeping claims, breathless predictions and a rush to declare that it will finally “fix” everything. It won’t. While AI has transformative potential, it isn’t a cure-all to some of advertising’s biggest problems. […]
Real-Time Ad Market Intelligence Arrives Built on Verified Spend Data
Advertising market intelligence is shifting toward real-time visibility. Guideline has launched Market Monitor™, a new weekly insights subscription built entirely on verified, transaction-level advertising spend data—giving agencies, brands, and investors a faster, clearer view of global media investment trends. As media buying becomes more dynamic, the move reflects a broader shift toward data-driven decisions grounded […]
Flamel.ai Launches Luna to Fix Franchise Marketing Execution
For years, franchise and multi-location brands have faced a persistent breakdown between strategy and execution. Corporate teams build campaigns designed to scale nationally, but at the local level, those franchise marketing campaigns often fragment—deployed inconsistently, delayed, or not executed at all. This week, Flamel.ai introduced a platform designed to close that gap. The company announced […]
Street Fight’s Big 3
Street Fight Columns
Street Fight Categories
Why Challenger Brands Win by Solving Different Problems