News and Analysis
How Americans Shop Today
All industries—apparel, grocery, electronics—are affected differently by the move to e-commerce, and consumers are turning to new options, including social marketplaces, disrupting what we typically think of as digital shopping. Here are some insights on major market changes, including the key to Amazon’s dominance, the industries flouting the turn to e-commerce, and a curious preference among millennials, from a recent survey of 1,000 consumers by Signs.com.
6 Companies Reimagining Last-Mile Delivery
There’s a renewed push in Silicon Valley to tackle last-mile delivery. The use of autonomous vehicles, drones, and artificial intelligence is what more and more vendors are pushing for. Last-mile delivery is the most expensive part of shipping, and increasing fees mean prices are only going higher. The company that can get goods from a transportation hub to the customer’s doorstep in the shortest amount of time will win the retail game, and technology firms are hoping that their innovative solutions will be the answer that retailers are looking for.
Here are six examples of companies that are working to innovate in the last-mile delivery space.
Offline Retailers See Huge Boost From Prime Day’s Online Sales
Amazon wasn’t the only retailer to see high purchase intent during its two-day event. Competing retailers saw similar successes piggybacking on Amazon’s newest shopping holiday with their own discounts and limited-time deals. This year’s Prime Day event drove a 14% spike in U.S. traffic on its first day, compared to baseline traffic from the month of June.
According to data collected by Constructor.io, an AI-first SaaS provider for ecommerce sites, among the non-Amazon companies having sales during Prime Day, search volume increased an average of more than 500%.
Commentary
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.
How Cisco’s Meraki Became the Largest Vendor of Bluetooth Beacon Gateways
While Meraki’s routers have long had the ability to broadcast iBeacon packets, in October they released a software upgrade which enables API access to these radios, activating a major new feature. Now customers can use their Wi-Fi access points to monitor beacons from third party vendors.
Under Pressure, Local TV Advertising Still Shows Lots of Opportunity
Local TV ad spending is set to take a big hit next year, projected to decrease at a double-digit pace after an election and Olympics year. Nonetheless, local TV represents a solid opportunity for smart media and marketing tech companies, as TV remains U.S. consumers’ primary time-sink.
Latest Posts
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.
Street Fight Daily: Google Changes Desktop Search Ads, Yahoo to Start Reaching Out to Bidders
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Google Makes Desktop Search Look More Mobile-ish to Milk More Shopping-Ads Cash (Recode)… Yahoo Said to Start Approaching Possible Bidders As Soon As Monday (Bloomberg)… What Is Groupon’s Real Value to Alibaba? (Crain’s Chicago Business)…
Location Data Management 101: Seeing the Bigger Picture
Many brands make the mistake of viewing location data as nothing more than plumbing for their local listings — or a component of a listing management strategy. But location data management is much bigger than listing management and data syndication.
Street Culture: DoorDash Aiming to Constantly Improve Both Product and People
Translating the desire to support business owners with successful on-demand functionality relies heavily on DoorDash’s 200 core employees. In 2015, the company expanded from three markets to 22, and CEO Tony Xu says he expects the company to double in size in 2016.
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AI Won’t Fix Advertising – It May Scale Its Chaotic Nature