News and Analysis

How Can Brands Capitalize on Google’s Latest Ads Update?

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Almost a month has passed since Google officially killed its ‘average position’ metric. The metric was retired on September 30, and marketers using Google Ads have been encouraged to transition to using ‘prominence metrics’—made up of the search top impression rate and search absolute top impression rate—instead. Google’s announcement was designed to give brands the opportunity to update their strategies before the average position metric was axed to hopefully make the transition a seamless process.

To understand how that transition is actually working in the real world, and how brands are adapting to the change from one metric to another, we connected with Walker Sands Digital’s Ryan Sorrell. A digital marketing expert with experience deploying competitive content analysis for B2B clients, Sorrell shared his thoughts on how Google’s decision to axe the average position metric will impact brands going forward and which new opportunities are at play as Google shifts its sights toward automated bidding strategies.

Inform Your Multichannel Customer Experience Strategy

Report: Text Messages, Online Chat Essential Channels for Businesses

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More than 70% of US consumers polled in a survey commissioned by business messaging platform Quiq had engaged with businesses via text messaging or online chat two or more times in the previous month.

That should be a signal to businesses that email and phone are no longer sufficient; messaging will be key to survival for consumer-facing businesses of the future.

Amazon is Making Meaningful Gains in Search Ad Market

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It will be key to see if the pace of Amazon’s overall and search ad revenue slows down in the next few years as it exhausts. For now, its ad success is just one more sign, like the news that it will likely sell its Go tech to retailers, that Amazon can find and dominate new businesses beyond its core identity as the Everything Store. 

Commentary

Is Snapchat Quietly Redefining Local?

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Snapchat’s recent moves and related developments seem to indicate an emerging redefinition of what it means to be digitally local, a redefinition that is happening under our noses and without much fanfare as Snapchat works to gain and maintain the eyeballs of Millennials.

Local Providers Should Take Care in Interpreting Big Mobile Advertising Numbers

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One of the key themes of Mary Meeker’s annual presentation was mobile advertising — its growth, targeting, and measurability. But recent Street Fight surveys of SMBs and brand marketers indicate that mobile still has surprisingly low usage and perceived effectiveness.

How Sports Marketers Can Extend Their Brands and Win Big This Summer

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With so much opportunity — and competition — how can marketers stand out from the crowd and forge meaningful relationships with sports fans? Here are some best practices that will enable marketers to identify their perfect audiences and build lifelong relationships with fans.

Latest Posts

Bypassing the Hurdles to Bring Programmatic to SMB Advertisers

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SMB advertisers care about reaching consumers, not the nitty gritty of technology covered in the ad trades. Local media companies and smaller agencies should focus on how programmatic technology helps them sell that outcome, rather than get stuck selling the technology itself.

BUST: A Hard Landing as Soft Surroundings Files for Bankruptcy

Case Study: Virginia Retail Chain Shifts Print Ad Budget to Social Channels

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Kim Glover, A. Dodson’s director of marketing, says that Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest make up the core of the retailer’s online marketing program — however the company is “always ready to evolve” with its customers as new platforms gain in popularity and usage.

Street Fight Daily: Microsoft to Buy LinkedIn, Google Maps Local Search Ads

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… 10 Things to Know About the New Google Maps Local Search Ads… Siri To Be the Focus of Apple’s Developers Conference… What Happened to Austin When Uber and Lyft Left Town …

8 More Community Sites Climb to Michele’s List Revenue Pinnacle in 2016

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Overall, 78% of the 96 sites in the closely watched survey of independent news sites reported revenue increases in 2015, with 13% saying they doubled revenue and close to a third reporting gains of 50%.

Street Culture: Birdzi Finds ‘Liberation’ in Lack of Corporate Hierarchy

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“What happens a lot of times in corporations is you find that decisions are made that can’t be questioned,” says CEO Shekar Ramen. “We don’t have any of that and we want to maintain the flat nature of our company as much as possible.”

Street Fight Daily: Uber Launches Advance Scheduling, Verizon-Yahoo Plot Thickens

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Uber Begins Letting Passengers Schedule Rides Up to 30 Days in Advance… Verizon Might Have to Pay for More Pieces of Yahoo Than It Wants… Attention Facebook and Google: Apple is Selling Mobile App Ads Now, Too…

Picking the Locksmiths: Bizyhood Unlocks the ‘Ghosts in the Data’ Problem

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What would you do if you wanted to game Google into thinking you’ve got a vast network of local shops servicing area customers based on their search queries? According to a recent New York Times article, some lead gen companies are creating thousands of ghost listings to achieve just this. Bizyhood is trying to combat the practice.

Scaling the Neighborhood: A Community Focus for Local Services

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So far, digital services, even those focused on local, have done more to atomize local communities than unite them, training us to rely on anonymous resources for the information and recommendations we used to get from our friends and neighbors.

Street Fight Daily: Google May Make Billions on Maps’ Local Ads, Uber IPO Coming No Time Soon

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Thanks to Local Ads, Google Maps Could Produce $1.5 Billion in New Revenue… Uber CEO Says Company Will Go Public ‘As Late As Humanly Possible’… The Bezos Effect: How Amazon’s Founder is Reinventing The Washington Post…

#SFSW16: What VCs Are Looking for in Local Startups

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The pace for venture capital funding has slowed and deals that once took days to close now take months, but Hunter Walk (Partner, Homebrew VC) and Eric Feng (General Partner, Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers) say it’s still an exciting time to be involved in local tech.