News and Analysis

Alexa Has the Confidence of SMB Marketers. Should It?

Share this:

Forty-eight percent of marketers surveyed by Uberall said they trust the e-commerce giant over its competition when it comes to marketing applications of voice technology in these early days of the medium. Google Assistant had the vote of 29% of the market, with Apple’s Siri scoring a surprisingly high 17% given the widespread consensus that voice is really a two-way race at the moment.

Adjust Leverages AI to Neutralize Ad Fraud

Share this:

Advertisers and brands are expected to lose an estimated $50 billion as a result of ad fraud by 2025, with one of the most problematic types of ad fraud involving bots designed to mimic human behaviors. Using bots, fraudsters can imitate clicks and engagement KPIs on ad campaigns, wreaking havoc for mobile ad vendors and the advertisers that work with them. So what’s the solution? Firms like Unbotify are pioneering a new approach to bot detection and digital fraud prevention using artificial intelligence and machine learning. Unbotify’s solution analyzes human behavior patterns within websites’ and mobile apps’ user flows in order to differentiate between bots and humans.

Data Science as a Solution: conDati Opens Doors for Digital Retailers

Share this:

The pitch is that today’s marketers with omnichannel inspirations need a machine learning-driven platform that will not only assess the success of campaigns across several media but also point them toward paths for future success. That’s an expensive technical infrastructure to create in-house, and conDati’s betting its solution is worth the spend.

Commentary

Tackling the Problem of Measurement in Local

Share this:

“Google’s always had the disadvantage of being a more complex and opaque product than Facebook,” writes David Mihm, “but it feels like they’ve made almost zero progress on this front in the last eight years.”

Why Augmented Reality Will Eventually Take Over Local

Share this:

Soon, graphical overlays to the physical world will amplify everything from retail shopping (store navigation and product info), to finding a restaurant (ratings & reviews) to buying a home (values & specs). Utility will lead; marketing departments and jargon police can follow.

How Online Lenders Can Refine Their Targeting of SMBs

Share this:

The combination of doubling down on the minority of SMBs that are most likely to be receptive to capital and making it easy to engage these SMBs across on/offline channels with personalized, automated campaigns can make all of the difference.

Latest Posts

Street Fight Daily: Twitter Will Show Ads to ‘Casual Viewers,’ Location Startup Factual Raises $35M

Share this:

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Twitter Aims to Show Advertising to Much Wider Audience (New York Times)… Startup Factual Knows Your Commute, and Much More (Wall Street Journal)… Billy Penn and Knight Foundation Want to Build ‘Yelp for Mobile News’ (Poynter)…

6 Ways Local Merchants Can Use Rewards to Bring in Holiday Shoppers

Share this:

Consumers are expected to spend $630.5 billion this holiday shopping season. Local merchants are fighting tooth and nail to take back a larger share of that revenue from their ecommerce competitors. Here’s what industry leaders said about the types of incentives that work best for encouraging shoppers to make holiday purchases at local retail businesses instead of big-box stores or ecommerce sites.

Why Location Management Matters in the Age of Mobile and Social

Share this:

If SEO is about websites and marketing is about brand awareness, location management is about brick-and-mortar businesses and removing friction along the customer journey from online search to offline purchase. Ignore it at your peril.

Street Fight Daily: Uber Launches Food Delivery App, Walmart Develops Own Mobile Payments Service

Share this:

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Uber Tests Standalone Food Delivery App (TechCrunch)… Walmart to Offer Smartphone Payments in Stores (Wall Street Journal)… Facebook Is Updating Instant Articles to Help Publishers Make More Money (Adweek)…

Street Fight Daily: Yahoo Will Spin Off Core Businesses, Pinterest Buys Two Search-Centric Startups

Share this:

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Yahoo Is Said to End Plan to Spin Off Alibaba Stake (New York Times)… Pinterest Buys Two Startups to Bolster Image Search (Wall Street Journal)… Uber Is Testing a New Service That Sounds Exactly Like a Bus (Business Insider)…

PlaceIQ Teams Up with IRI to Tackle Online-to-Offline Attribution

Share this:

Marketers face a number of big challenges today. One is pinpointing their audiences as they move from device to device — and then from platform to platform on those different devices. Another is making sense all of the data consumers generate in the scores of micro-interactions they have every day across the devices and platforms they use. A third is online-to-offline attribution. The partnership with IRI that PlaceIQ announced today is a step toward tackling these hurdles.

Why 2016 Will Be a Big Year for iOS 9

Share this:

Apple has established a new standard for conducting “nearby” searches, thanks to an enhancement to the Apple Spotlight search functionality. This moves the consumer down the path to purchase in a few significant ways, including proactive local search content and results that change by time of day.

Black Friday Weekend’s Unreported Story: The Rise of ‘Bricks and Clicks’

Share this:

The mostly unreported story of Black Friday weekend is that much of the ecommerce growth came from “bricks-and-clicks” retailers, not pure-play e-tailers. The reason: Physical stores offer a critical customer experience and serve as a “brand anchor,” both of which support ecommerce for traditional retailers. Stores drive online sales because they instill a sense of confidence and trust in the consumer.

Case Study: NJ Gym Uses Loyalty Program to Increase Sales from Existing Members

Share this:

When consumers commit to joining a gym and paying a fixed rate each month, they’re indirectly confirming their loyalty to the business. But after years of working with clients at Gold’s Gym of Jersey City, sales manager Mauricio Calmet noticed that a secondary loyalty market exists, one that’s rarely tapped by businesses once they’ve signed customers up for yearlong contracts or memberships.

Street Fight Daily: HomeAdvisor Expands to New Cities, Airbnb Confirms Rumored $1.5B Round

Share this:

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… HomeAdvisor Expands, Takes On Angie’s List in Search for Ambitious Employees (Denver Business Journal)… Airbnb Just Confirmed a Massive $1.5 Billion Round That Makes It the Third-Highest Valued Startup in the World (Business Insider)… Yahoo: Be Careful Playing in Traffic (Wall Street Journal)…