News and Analysis
As Visual Search Takes Off, Brands Adapt to Shifting Demands
Visual search and image recognition are capturing the attention of investors, retail insiders, and everyday consumers. To find out more about where visual search is heading, and what marketers can do to adapt their strategies with the latest trends in mind, we checked in with Apu Gupta, CEO of Curalate, a social commerce company that turns images and videos into storefronts.
The Future of Location in Retail: Beyond Ad Targeting
Location data is serving as the conduit to connect consumer-facing marketing initiatives with behind-the-scenes merchandising and logistics. According to a survey by Blis, WBR Insights, and Future Stores, the majority of retail marketers (71%) have some type of location strategy in place, with the primary goal being to drive foot traffic and trigger location-based mobile advertising. That’s not a particular surprise, given how popular the latest location-based marketing tactics have become. More surprising, however, is how common it has become for retailers to use location data for local product and inventory search (60%) and localized online customer service (51%).
Amazon’s Dash Buttons Have Met Their End. Does Their Demise Truly Signal Failure?
Dash buttons were met with detractors right from the get go. Some called out the “hideous” design, while others lambasted Amazon for creating $5 buttons that would inevitably end up in landfills. But at Amazon, the Dash button initiative isn’t considered a failure. Rather, the project was designed to get consumers more comfortable with the “connected home” concept and the idea of shopping through devices other than desktop computers and smartphones.
Commentary
Making Sense of the Mobile Marketing Spending Disparity
Consumers’ relationships with media and mobile devices have changed. Advertising needs to change as well. The responsibility is with advertisers and their agencies and service providers to demand the granularity and specificity that you can only achieve with the targeted data you get from mobile advertising.
Why Data Attributes Power the Long Tail of Local Search
The mandate for brands is simple: manage data attributes as a crucial element of your location marketing strategy. But it’s not enough to create attributes. You need to constantly monitor the ever-changing nature of your business and your customers and be ready to act on your attributes as needed.
Latest Posts
Top 5 Exits in Local Tech of 2015
The local technology space saw plenty of M&A activity in 2015 and remains poised for another busy year in 2016. Rampant expansion of certain areas such as on-demand services and delivery apps makes further consolidation likely. The startup scene saw its share of healthy — if not billion-dollar — exits as well. Here’s a recap of the five of the biggest exits in the local tech industry in 2015.
Street Fight Daily: Instagram’s Massive Ad Spending, Capitalizing on Consumers’ ‘Zigzagging’ Journeys
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Ad Buyer: Spend on Instagram Has Increased ‘Something Like 11,000%’ Between Q3 and Q4 (Business Insider)… The New ‘Zigzagging’ Customer Journey: Think Local, Act Mobile (GeoMarketing)… Google Plans New, Smarter Messaging App (Wall Street Journal)…
Daily Voice Shows Scale and High CPMs Can Mix in Hyperlocal News
Trying to scale community news has many pitfalls. Sites that go for scale can end up publishing glorified “bulletin boards” as they seek to spread budget-limited journalistic resources across multiple communities. The end result can be bottom-fishing remnant CPMs that can be as low as $1. Carll Tucker, CEO of six-year-old Daily Voice, which recently expanded into North Jersey, says its scaling model has produced average CPMs that “hover a few pennies under $8.”
10 Top Location-Based Marketing Campaigns of 2015
Beacons emerged two years ago but only seemed to come into their own in 2015. Despite hurdles to overcome in terms of consumer acceptance, marketers don’t lack impressive numbers for engagement and store visitation, particularly when combined with more commonplace techniques such as geofencing and targeted mobile ads. We asked our friends at GeoMarketing to look back at 10 campaigns that pioneered in the space in the past year.
Street Fight Daily: Foursquare Raising a “Down Round,” Google and Ford Partner for Driverless Cars
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Foursquare Raising Round to Capitalize on Data Business (TechCrunch)… Google Is Partnering with Ford to Build Self-Driving Cars (Business Insider)… With 100,000 Sellers Connected, Square’s App Marketplace Builds a Bridge (TechCrunch)…
ReachLocal Retrenches to Focus on Markets with ‘Potential for Positive, Sustainable Economics’
Local digital marketing firm ReachLocal has been engaged in a lengthy turnaround effort. It announced last week that it was exiting direct sales in the U.K. and focusing on markets with “potential for positive, sustainable economics.” The announcement indicates ReachLocal is still focused on cutting things that aren’t working rather than regaining growth momentum.
Ad Blockers: One Big Distraction from the Real Issue
In a year of overblown topics, the grand prize goes to mobile ad blockers. The backlash is not only disproportionate to real impact but also has fueled the wrong conversation. Instead of fighting ad blockers — or fueling them in the case of biased reports — the ad industry should ask itself how it got in this position to begin with.
Street Fight Daily: Amazon Could Launch Air Delivery Service, Yelp’s Stoppelman Goes After Google
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Amazon in Talks to Launch Its Own Air-Cargo Business (Seattle Times)… Google Has Lost Its Mind, Says Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman (Recode)… Etsy Launches Trendy Local Maker Guides for U.S. Cities (The Next Web)…
LBMA Podcast: Absolut Bottles Become Media Platforms, Swedish Bakery Sends Real Treats in Exchange for Web Cookies
On the show: Pernod Ricard turns Absolut bottles into IoT play; Swedish bakery Pågen sends real treats in exchange for web cookies; Google provides $1 million grant to Wayfindr in London; Irisys launches Gazelle 2; Jane Goodall launches Tapestry of Hope map. Plus, news from PlaceIQ and IRI; Walmart; Sears; Dwolla and Seamless; and GameStop.
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