News and Analysis

By Unlocking Vehicle Data, Car Rental Companies Help Build Smarter Cities

As operator of three of the most recognized brands in the industry — Avis, Budget and Zipcar — Avis Budget Group represents a mobility ecosystem of more than 11,000 locations in approximately 180 countries. The company recently partnered with the connected-car data firm Otonomo to manage its connected cars on Otonomo’s automotive data services platform. Otonomo will help ABG derive insights from its large connected vehicle fleet, including anonymizing, standardizing, and delivering data from Toyota, Ford, Peugeot and GM vehicles.

The deal between ABG and Otonomo is expected to generate more than 4 billion road miles of data this year, and 7 billion road miles of data by 2020, with much of that data being used for predictive maintenance, smart city planning, and streamlining of the rental process.

5 Business Models for On-Demand Delivery

In the on-demand food delivery vertical alone, revenue is expected to reach $94 billion this year. Other verticals, like beauty, parking, health, shipping, and marijuana, are seeing significant gains, as well. Although the space is maturing, investors are still seeing great growth opportunities. Any number of on-demand delivery startups has the potential to take over the space if it continues to grow as its current pace.

To understand where that growth might occur, we need to take a step back and examine which business models are proving most successful in the on-demand delivery space and how startups are implementing those business models for financial gain.

school chalkboard

How Retailers Are Reaching Back-to-School Shoppers

It’s that time of the year. As summertime comes to an end, parents around the country have started filling up shopping carts with pencils, notebooks, and binders. Families in the U.S. are expected to spend an average of $696 on back-to-school supplies this year, the highest amount ever recorded by the National Retail Federation.

Back-to-school shopping has become an important event for retailers like Target, Walmart, and Office Depot. While ecommerce is king at other times of the year, parents shopping for their kids’ back-to-school supplies are just as likely to shop in-store as they are online.

Commentary

Making Sense of Amazon’s Push Deeper Into Local

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

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.

Why Location-Based Machine Learning Is the Smart Path to Personalization

With the right data, a brand can keep the relationship with the customer warm while they’re off-property, out-of-town or on a budget. Offering the right deals and communications that are relevant to real interests means that the relationship between man and machine is getting better all the time.

Latest Posts

Street Fight Daily: Facebook Reaches 3M Advertisers, Googler Explains AdWords Changes

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Facebook Just Passed 3 Million Advertisers — Here’s Why It’s Doubling Down on Small Businesses (Business Insider)… Google’s Take on the Recent Changes to the Results Page (Search Engine Land)… The Inside Story of Uber’s Big Bet on Food (Business Insider)…

Local Media Companies Tout Events for Revenue Diversification

At that Borrell Associates event this week in New York, several speakers touted local live events — from awards shows, to beer tastings, to road races — as a potentially lucrative revenue stream with sizable margins, that local publishers could easily expand into.

Unacast Partners With Opera to Let Marketers Retarget Consumers Using Beacon Data

The partnership potentially represents a shift from the GPS data that advertisers have previously relied upon for recent location ( which only works when users are outdoors and actively using their mobile devices) and toward more granular beacon data in profile creation and retargeting.

Will ApplePay Be the Company’s Next Mega-Business?

It is a truth universally acknowledged that Apple is currently in need of a really big new product (a la iPhone or iPad) to keep growing. I think the company has ample opportunity to turn the payments industry on its head and make ApplePay its next big product.

Street Fight Daily: The Quiet Success of Ecommerce App Wish, LinkedIn Launches B2B Marketing Tool

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Ecommerce App Wish Has ‘Hundreds of Millions of Users’ (Plus Other Stats About the Company) (TechCrunch)… LinkedIn Debuts New Targeting Feature for Marketers (AdAge)… SoundHound’s Virtual Assistant Launches Out of Beta (VentureBeat)…

As Ad Blockers Proliferate, IAB’s Rothenberg Tells Local Publishers to Stick to Their Guns

“Ad blocking represents the new normal in the media industry,” he said at Borrell’s local advertising conference in NYC. And if present trends continue, ad blocking could soon “surpass 50% on most sites.”

How Data Is Poised to Significantly Transform Local Marketing

It is becoming clear that this is the year when our industry effectively leverages data integration across the marketing ecosystem. One significant aspect of this industry evolution is the injection of physical-world data with other data sets, as well as mobile. Mobile data is the glue that connects all data with the broader ecosystem.

Good Uncle’s Cerilli: ‘We Could Change the Face of Franchising’

If Wiley Cerilli’s new venture has its way, geography won’t be as limiting a factor in determining who has access to gourmet food and celebrated dishes from famous chefs. The company, which recently raised $2.2 million, will launch this fall in smaller cities and towns, linking local populations to big-city food via a mobile app and delivery service.

Street Fight Daily: Google/Facebook vs. Publishers, Will Alibaba Buy Yahoo Stake?

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… In Battle with Google and Facebook, More Publishers Join Forces (Digiday)… Alibaba Raises More Cash, Yahoo Stake In Sight? (Forbes)… Most Mobile Marketers Are Using Location, But How Do You Do It Right? (Marketing Land)…

Making Sense of Google’s Changes that Just Blew Up Online Ads for Local Businesses

There’s really no way to overstate what a massive change Google’s ad reconfiguring is for everyone in the SEM industry. But it’s going to have a more profound — and even devastating — effect on locally-oriented businesses who had relied on Adwords as a key marketing tool.