News and Analysis
6 Trends to Watch in Holiday Search Marketing
With fewer than two months to go until Christmas, retailers are already kicking their holiday search marketing tactics into high gear. Holiday sales this year are expected to increase roughly 4% over 2018, according to the National Retail Federation, and consumers are expected to be especially price-conscious. How will the retail industry respond to the changing dynamics in search marketing?
Let’s take a look at some of the biggest trends expected to influence holiday search marketing this year, from tactics for extending the local reach of holiday campaigns and how those tactics convert customers at the point of decision to newer products like Local Inventory Ads, which allows marketers to feed store-level inventory into Google search.
In Fitness Industry, Vertical Platforms Cater to Specialized Operations
Online appointment booking platforms are a dime a dozen, used by businesses in a huge range of industries. But among fitness businesses, specifically, general use booking platforms aren’t very common. That’s because fitness businesses are more likely to use vertical-specific tools designed to meet the needs of specialized operations.
Perhaps more so than any other industry, health and wellness has shown a great desire for verticalized technology solutions. Although verticalization isn’t limited to the health and wellness industry, fitness studios and related businesses are much more likely to use technology platforms designed specifically for their industry.
Uber, Lyft, DoorDash Fight Gig Economy Law in California
Ride-hailing giants Uber and Lyft are teaming up with restaurant delivery service DoorDash to fight California’s AB 5, a law that would force gig-economy companies that survive on contractor labor to register their drivers (or dashers) as employees and offer them benefits, Vox reported.
The coalition, the Protect App-Based Drivers and Services campaign, is attempting to place a referendum on the 2020 California ballot that would give voters the choice to exempt ride-sharing services from the law. That would presumably include DoorDash, which is not a ride-hailing service but essentially iterated Uber’s business model, employing drivers to escort food instead of passengers from A to B on demand.
Commentary
Parsing Google Fred and Other Quality Updates: How to Prepare or Recover
If you are involved in any form of SEO, you know how daunting it can be to keep up with Google algorithm updates. From the Mobile First Index to the Owl update to Google Fred, the tide is always shifting. It is important to step back a moment and take a look at what Google is trying to do.
Latest Posts
Your Local Broadcast: Centric Finds the Cameras in Your Neighborhood
The new service is a video discovery app and broadcasting platform that enable users to browse, view and interact with video that’s being shared around them. “It’s like being handed a new map to your neighborhood that has all sorts of stuff you didn’t know existed before,” said CEO Vincent Gibson.
#SFSW16 VIDEO: How On-Demand Is Changing the Way Brick-and-Mortar Businesses Compete With Ecommerce
While ecommerce companies have doubled down on taking their chunks out of the local pie, some on-demand services are trying to find ways to use their immediacy to help brick-and-mortar businesses fight back. At Street Fight Summit West earlier this month, a panel looked at this tension between ecommerce and brick-and-mortar.
Street Fight Daily: The Voice Search Explosion, Publishers Tap Into Location-Based Programmatic
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Even Facebook Can’t Just Waltz Into the Location Data Space… How the Voice Search Explosion Will Change Local Search… Condé Nast, The New York Times, and Forbes Tap Into Location-Based Programmatic Platform…
#SFSW16 VIDEO: Rethinking Restaurants — Local Tech Remakes an Industry
Restaurants are a particularly large and important vertical in local, and as such they’ve long been a testing ground for a variety of digital products. Now a new generation of companies is starting to use local marketing and delivery services to rethink what a restaurant is and how we think about our dining experiences.
Street Fight Daily: Facebook Canvas Ads Flourish, Google Tests Click-to-SMS Extension
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Facebook’s Genre-Bending Canvas Ads Demonstrate the Social Network’s Strength… Startup Challenges Uber, Lyft with Lower Fares, Higher Driver Commissions… Search Ad Decline Report May Explain Google’s Friday Stock Drop…
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