News and Analysis
Alexa Has the Confidence of SMB Marketers. Should It?
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
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
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.
Latest Posts
Why 2016 Will Be a Big Year for iOS 9
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’
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
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
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)…
Case Study: Salon Leverages Free Wi-Fi to Evaluate Digital Promotions
Collecting customer email addresses and generating Facebook “likes” are two tasks that are at the top of virtually every small business marketer’s to-do list. Edges Salon & Spa has a system in place to streamline this process and encourage customer loyalty at the same time. For the past seven months, it has been offering customers free Wi-Fi in exchange for the chance to learn about their behaviors and engage them on mobile.
Swiftype’s Riley: Site Search Can Make News More Compelling
The importance of relevant searches extends beyond search engines. For publishers, custom site search that helps make better decisions about how to maximize the impact of their content, know and understand the likes of their users, and increase their level of engagement can make a material difference in their business. “The key to building a relevant search experience is blending complex signals together and ensuring your site search algorithm is always improving,” said Swiftype co-founder Matt Riley.
Street Fight Daily: Gawker Media’s Ecommerce Success, Amazon Will Have Its Own Fleet of Shipping Trucks
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… How Gawker Turned into Groupon (Motherboard)… Amazon Buys Thousands of Truck Trailers as Its Transportation Ambitions Grow (Recode)… Waze’s Growth Chief: Even Driverless Cars Need a Better Route (USA Today)…
Why a Remote Work Policy Is Worth Considering
More than 3.5 million employees work remotely at least half the time, a technology-enabled trend that’s on the rise. Many employers claim that workers are more productive when they work remotely, but some technology companies are not considering remote workers or don’t allow telecommuting at all.
LBMA Podcast: Kantar Shopcom and 4INFO Team Up, Tapad Partners with VisualDNA
On the show: Kantar Shopcom and 4INFO team up; Tapad partners with VisualDNA; JCDecaux Star Wars OOH campaign; Placester raises $27 million; Beretta showcases its new i-Protect bluetooth gun; Brazil’s L&PM Editores prints books that double as subway tickets. Plus, news from Airbnb and MLSE; Royal Caribbean; TCS and Loctronix; and Loblaws.
Openings and New Hires at Sears, Uber, and Yext
Every two weeks, Geoff Michener covers some of the latest job changes taking place in this dynamic industry. In this week’s column, Sears snags the former CMO of Restaurant.com, Uber lands a Google product veteran, and Yext hires a sales executive for small business and partner channels.
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