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
As Local’s Complexity Grows, What Does It Take to Build a Sustainable Agency Business?
“There are two paths for consultants or small agencies today,” writes David Mihm. “Either be a generalist who’s aware of all the major channels, and the kinds of businesses that are good fits for those channels, or develop an incredibly deep focus in a particular channel, and make a name for yourself as the go-to resource within that channel.”
How ‘Moment-based’ Targeting Will Impact Local Advertising
We are now onto the second phase of moment-based targeting, focusing on the combination of multiple factors in a moment to determine when a consumer will be most receptive. To find these receptive moments, an advertiser can identify and tap into many signals that will provide info about the end recipient’s state of mind.
New Report Identifies Enterprise Customer Types & Needs
In our latest analysis, we discovered that the integration needs of enterprise marketers reveal some clear correlations in terms of attitude, behavior and installed technologies. For example, the companies that found local store sites to be most effective were also doing well with local print, and planned to increase their social, mobile, and digital display advertising.
Latest Posts
The Power of Pairing: 4 Reasons Matching Is Gaining Traction in Local Home Services
When variables such as trust, uncertainty, availability, and geography are at the core of decision-making — as they so often are when it comes to hiring professionals to perform home services — matching, especially when coupled with ratings and reviews, offers consumers peace of mind. It also provides an immediate connection in an often urgent and sometimes complicated time of need.
Street Fight Daily: Twitter Will Show Ads to ‘Casual Viewers,’ Location Startup Factual Raises $35M
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
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.
Street Fight Daily: Uber Launches Food Delivery App, Walmart Develops Own Mobile Payments Service
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
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
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
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.
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Beyond Search: AI Visibility the New Growth Lever for MULO Brands