News and Analysis
AT&T Says It Will Stop Selling Location Data as Practice Comes Under Greater Scrutiny
AT&T announced late last week that it will stop selling location data, following an investigation from multimedia publication Motherboard indicating that a bounty hunter (yes, bounty hunter) equipped with a few hundred bucks and a phone number can track down the phone’s owner within a couple blocks’ radius. Verizon and T-Mobile joined AT&T in saying they would soon wind down any remaining location-data sharing deals.
Commentary
Brands, Meet the Data Amplifiers
Data amplifiers distribute and publish your data to a broader audience than you could ever do on your own — what I call the “network effect.” Your brand becomes more visible because your business data becomes more open and accessible to the influencers who are in a position to help customers find your business.
Retailers Shift Focus to Offline Affiliate Marketing
Location analytics represent the new battleground in retail, but imagine if you could apply the same analytics for online attribution to offline purchases. Offline affiliate marketing does just that, giving retailers the tools to analyze data from in-store purchases similar to what they can do for online purchases.
Latest Posts
Case Study: Hotel Attracts Luxury Travelers with Guest-Facing Mobile Tech
As London’s boutique Lanesborough Hotel began what would become a 19-month, multi-million dollar refurbishment in 2014, executives started looking for strategic ways to appeal to guests with luxury tastes. To go along with the newly renovated rooms, which reopened in July, the team decided to add a technology component that would be unlike anything travelers had ever experienced.
Street Fight Daily: What Dorsey’s Twitter Gig Means For Square, Google to Roll Out ‘Now on Tap’
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Jack Dorsey’s Dual CEO Role Raises Questions for Square (New York Times)… Now on Tap, Google’s Mobile Search Trojan Horse, Is Out of the Gate (Recode)… Pinterest Expands Buyable Pins to More Ecommerce Platforms, Reaching Thousands of Merchants (TechCrunch)…
The Struggle to Save Local News Is Not Doomed
The current state of local news in the technology-driven information age continues to be a hotly debated topic in industry circles. There’s more consensus around the grim prospects for local print media, and more debate about the outlook for independent local news sites. Understanding where the future lies for local news requires a thorough parsing of both positions.
Street Fight Daily: How Surge Pricing Could Affect Retail, Walgreens’ Mobile Approach
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Uber-Style Surge Pricing May Catch on with Retailers (Forbes)… Why Walgreens Is Partnering with Postmates and Betting Big on Mobile (LinkedIn Pulse)… Kroger Tests ‘Smart Shelf’ Technology (Indianapolis Star)…
NinthDecimal’s Staas: Programmatic Will Become a Strong Opportunity for Small Business Owners
“One of the challenges is a lot of the tools around the ecosystem have not really been built to scale for the small business owner, and they still require a lot of sophistication in understanding how to buy and sell media. The opportunity is in looking at how some of these platforms are evolving. I think programmatic will become a very strong opportunity for the small business owner,” said NinthDecimal president David Staas about shifting trends in location-based marketing and audience targeting.
LBMA Podcast: Eatsa Removes Waiters from the Restaurant, Coke-moji Happiness Experiment, Oscar Mayer…Matchmaker?
On the show: Eatsa removes waiters from the restaurant; Coke-moji Happiness Experiment; Oscar Mayer is your new…matchmaker?; Fujitsu partners with iProximity; Panama does location-based video sharing; Goodwill’s goBIN. Plus, news from Thinknear, Starbucks, Canadian Tire, and Mobiquity and Mobeam, and Rob’s new gig as VP of marketing at Foko.
Four Local Marketing Strategies to Boost Same-Store Sales
Company success often rises and falls on the ability to deliver same-store sales increases, so multi-unit brands spend a lot of energy managing around this core metric. But it’s difficult to drive local success at scale with a one-size-fits-all approach. Here’s a list of four creative strategies (and associated tactics) that local stores can implement to boost their overall performance.
Beyond Likes: Win Hearts with Emotional Marketing