News and Analysis

Report: Fake Google Maps Listings Ensnare Consumers, Harm Legitimate Businesses

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“Chronic” local listings fraud on Google Maps, where con artists pose as handymen and other local service providers, sometimes stealing the names of legitimate operations, is endangering consumers and sucking business away from viable local businesses, the Wall Street Journal reported.

As Google seeks to prop up its lucrative but “cresting” search business and consolidate its lead in local, the tech giant is struggling to address the fraud issue and perhaps even to care about it. 

OOH Emerges as Strong Digital Channel for CPGs

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Consumer-packaged goods shoppers trust out-of-home advertisements more than those delivered on any other channel, a new report on CPGs and advertising from Vistar Media and MFour indicates. Fifty-three percent of consumers say they trust the content in OOH ads, more than any other single medium.

B2B Video Marketing Grows Up, Getting Briefer and Garnering More Attention

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The standards for B2B video marketing are rising as marketers get the hang of the hottest, no longer so new medium. Marketers are learning to keep things short and sweet, decreasing the average video length from six to four minutes from 2017 to 2018, and audiences are tuning in longer, Vidyard reports in its annual video in business report.

Commentary

Is It Time to Redefine ‘Local’ Marketing?

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We’ve reached a pivot point where local market nuances and differences can create definable opportunity. I am not saying that the age of the big box retail or e-commerce portal are over, but if a brand does a better job at leveraging local marketing it can create a competitive advantage and differentiation point.

Making Sense of Amazon’s Push Deeper Into Local

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Clearly Amazon is positioning itself in the sales funnel aggressively, Mike Blumenthal tells David Mihm. “And unlike Google their presale efforts lead directly to sales that they control. ”

Why Mobile Payments Will Heat Up in 2017

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Mobile payments have been inhibited by point-of-sale hardware upgrade requirements and the lack of a killer pitch for either users or merchants. But the movement to chip-based credit and debit cards in the U.S. could help.

Latest Posts

Yodle Weighs in on How Google’s SERP Change Has Affected Online Ads for SMBs

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With a few weeks of empirical data, we now have a much clearer sense of how or if this change has affected local AdWords campaigns. At Yodle, we have seen a negligible effect on the performance metrics of the search engine marketing (SEM) campaigns we run on behalf of our local small business clients.

How Badly Do Consumers Really Want Grocery Delivery?

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Instacart is bumping up against the realities of the economy. There are two countervailing trends that are working against the idea of grocery delivery: frugality, and shopping-as-entertainment.

Street Fight Daily: Groupon’s New Merchant App, Google Announces ‘Analytics 360’ Ad Products

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Groupon Launches New Merchant App That Puts the Daily Deal Front and Center (TechCrunch)… Google Introduces Products That Will Sharpen Its Ad Focus (New York Times)… Yelp’s Founder Once Thought No One Would Want to Post Opinions on the Internet (Chicago Tribune)…

The Changing Role of Local Search Ranking

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As mobile searches outpace desktop-based searches, proximity throws a wrench in the works of traditional rankings.

5 Online-to-Offline Attribution Tools for Merchants

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Seventy-nine percent of consumers say they research prices online before making purchases in person. Without the ability to identify which digital channels are most effective, merchants have no opportunity to optimize their strategies or understand the growth opportunities within online channels.

National-to-Local Marketers’ Top Pain Points Center on Integration

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Nearly half of those who responded said they spend 1/3 or more of their digital marketing dollars to support their branch offices, franchises, and distributors — and 40% of them expect that budget mix to increase.

It’s Valuable, But Is It Accurate? LBMA Report Shines Light On Marketers’ Location Data Issues

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According to a new survey, while 77 percent of marketers think that location based data is valuable, only 66 percent of them feel that it is accurate. This is a troubling discrepancy indicating that there is a lot of work to be done in standardization and verification.

5 Tools for Brands Looking to Harness Predictive Social Intelligence

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Predictive social intelligence platforms use big data to organize, pattern, and predict which online conversations will be happening tomorrow. By contextualizing future online chatter, brands can better target specific audiences on social channels like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Street Fight Daily: The Longevity of Online Grocery Delivery, How Foursquare is Winning SXSW

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Is Online Grocery Actually the Future? (Business Insider)… The Winner of This Year’s SXSW Interactive Is… (Forbes)… You Hate Paying Instacart Delivery Fees, So Pepsi Is Footing the Bill (Crain’s Chicago Business)

Borrell on Local Dailies and Their Tiny Digital Ad Share: They Need a New Story

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Local digital ad revenue will grow from $48 billion in 2015 to $66 billion in 2016, Borrell Associates projects in its new benchmarking report covering 10,395 sites in all media. That’s an eye-popping increase of 37.5%. But newspapers will see only a 6% to 7% revenue increase,