News and Analysis
7 Cannabis Data Analytics Firms
One of the signs that an industry is becoming more legitimate is when its major players start investing in analytics. With a recent boom in the number of data analytics firms entering the cannabis space, it’s time to reevaluate the landscape for recreational marijuana as a business.
The marijuana industry is expanding at a rapid pace. Analysts estimate the industry could reach $75 billion in global sales by 2030. With so much on the line and marijuana companies facing enormous pressure to innovate, investors are pushing for the increased use of data analytics to make more strategic business decisions.
Here are seven cannabis data analytics firms working to change the face of the industry right now.
7 Location Analytics Firms for Malls and Shopping Centers
If you want to see what retail innovation looks like first-hand, walk into a shopping mall. Faced with the option to transform or die, shopping mall operators across the country are choosing to fight back against the shifting tides in retail.
Here are seven tech firms that malls, and other retail giants, are relying on to collect and study location data gleaned from shoppers’ mobile devices.
With Shoelace, Its Latest Foray into (Local) Social, Google Aims to Do for Friends What Tinder Did for Dating
Perhaps Shoelace is less ambitious than Google+. But is finding friends, or others with whom to socialize, not the most central and yet unachieved aim of social networking? One that hinges on location and would be a gold mine for advertising, as it captures users far down the sales funnel, all the way at the point where they are ready to get together to spend some time at a local business? What if, in the same way online dating has gone from disreputable to de rigueur over the course of 10 years, finding friends online is something young people all do in 10 years, an engineering problem that Tinder rival Bumble is already trying to crack?
That would be a pretty big social network. The ambitions may not be so modest.
Commentary
New AIs Offer Surprisingly Traditional Results for Local
At least for now, Alexa and Google are thinking of AI-powered local search in the traditional sense of providing the user with a range of relevant options — even when organic search is trending toward the single best answer.
Street Fight Staff and Friends Predict 2017’s Top Stories (Part Two)
As 2016 draws to a close, we’ve once again asked Street Fight staffers and columnists to look into their crystal ball and offer prognostications for what they think will be the biggest story (or stories) in local in 2017.
Why Hasn’t a Killer App Emerged for Finding Local Events?
The local events space is still waiting on its ubiquitous app. There’s Yelp for restaurants. And Uber/Lyft for getting to and from. But there’s not yet a go-to for the crux of the night – the thing you do when you’re out on the town.
Latest Posts
Closing the Loop: PlaceIQ, LiveRamp Connect TV Campaigns With Location Visits
PlaceIQ and LiveRamp have announced the results of a new consumer behavior model that connects TV to the real world. The companies conducted a number of campaigns delivering targeted TV ads and then used location data to measure real-world store visitations, resulting in an average lift of 46 percent across three targeted verticals.
6 Tools Local Merchants Can Use to Grow Their Email Lists
Email marketing is cheap and it’s effective, but it isn’t always easy for small businesses. For local merchants, the toughest part about email marketing can be generating a list of engaged subscribers. Here are six examples of tools that merchants can use to grow their email lists.
GrubHub’s Chia: Scale and ‘Strong Partnership Model’ Keep Company Afloat in Saturated Market
Competition in the local delivery space has exploded in the past few years as on-demand providers rushed to connect service providers with consumers as efficiently as possible. Street Fight recently caught up with GrubHub’s SVP of Operations, Stan Chia, who says the company’s fundamental mission — restaurant discovery — hasn’t changed.
Street Fight Daily: Whole Foods Invests in Instacart, Ad Blocking Debate Gets Tempers Flaring
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Whole Foods to Invest in Instacart, Signs New Multi-Year Delivery Deal (Recode)… Fear, Loathing, and Opportunity On Display as Ad Industry Eyeballs Specter of Mobile Ad Blocking (TechCrunch)… Foursquare Won’t Be Facebook and That’s Just Fine, Crowley Says (Bloomberg)…
/Local: ‘Slashing’ the Local Web Into Tiny Nearby Slices
“It’s 2016, and everyone is connected to the information superhighway, and yet our towns, cities and locations are largely still dark and unsearchable,” says Local Web co-founder Jess Bachman. “The Local Web is the off-ramp for the Web. The problems it will solve are as varied as the people using it. “
NearSt Founder: Shopping Locally Can Be Easier Than Ordering From Amazon
The London-based startup wants to give brick-and-mortar stores the power to satisfy consumer needs as quickly as possible by offering them a platform to make their inventories searchable online — so users can search for and order specific items, and then get them right away.
Rocket Fuel and The Data Trust Partner to Improve GOP Ad Targeting
Political marketers will be able to leverage Rocket Fuel’s Moment Scoring technology, which the company describes as “a real-time calculation of each ad opportunity based on the likelihood that a consumer will engage in a desired action across channels, devices, and objectives.”
Street Fight Daily: Foursquare Launches Attribution Tool, Searching on the Physical Web
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Foursquare Will Tell Businesses When Their Ads Bring You Into an Actual Store (TechCrunch)… With the Physical Web, You Become the Search Engine (Marketing Land)… Why Starbucks Is Overhauling Its Loyalty Rewards Program (Fortune)…
How the Google My Business API Changes the Local Ecosystem
The move is a good thing for business owners but even more so for Google itself, which in providing a better means to gather data from business owners will improve the freshness and accuracy of its data.
Case Study: For Lead Generation, Cleaning Firm Prefers Emails to Website Clicks
Despite recent successes with mobile advertising, Herminio Gomes of Sharp Cleaning estimates he currently spends just 4% of his marketing budget on digital channels. The rest is divided between direct mailers, newspaper ads, flyers, and commissions.
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Meta Is Automating Ads, But Brands Still Face a Bigger Problem