News and Analysis
While Sales Growth Rate Slows, Amazon Marketplace, Cloud, and Ad Businesses Point to Long-Term Prosperity
For brands hoping to compete with Amazon (and potentially looking on with relief at a sign of fallibility from their digital rival), the company’s earnings report brings the news that Amazon Marketplace, where third-party sellers can reach customers, is doing more than twice as much in sales as Amazon’s first-party retail platform. Marketplace is troubled by bad practices and fake reviews, and its prosperity suggests the growing challenge for brands to get customers to even go to their sites at a time when Amazon is essentially the homepage of the commerce-oriented Internet.
As Voice Gets Established, Brands Grapple with Implementation
Consumer demand for voice technology has never been greater, and industry heavyweights like Google and Amazon are gearing up for a platform war as they work to integrate voice assistants into virtually every area of the connected consumer’s life. But behind the scenes, many brand marketers are struggling to connect the dots and design campaigns around a technology they don’t fully understand.
Apple Takes Advantage of Facebook’s Foul Play to Make a Privacy Statement
Not only did Facebook’s “Research” app, which paid 13- to 35-year-old users $20/month to access their search history, emails, and private messages, set off every imaginable alarm on the this-will-look-bad-when-the-exposé-comes-out PR radar (one of the world’s most powerful corporations must be lacking one of those), but the app also blatantly violated the terms of Apple’s Enterprise Developer Program, which proscribes distributing apps to consumers. It probably didn’t help that Facebook was searching tweens’ data for dirt on its competitors.
Commentary
As Local Search Behavior Evolves, Marketing Spending Will Follow
Merchants and marketers have to be findable and present useful information regardless of the searcher’s context. And that’s where the mechanics of local search marketing get messy. It feels like a great opportunity for tools and managed services that help break down those silos, and measure effectiveness across or between them.
4 Ways That Retailers Can Gain Traction on Mobile
As retailers continue to reimagine marketing to consumers using mobile, the tools to do so will evolve as well. Similar to marketing automation for B2B, retailer-focused solutions providers are enriching their platforms so that retailers can deliver marketing messages and offers to highly segmented consumers.
5 Timeless Sales Practices for Vendors Who Sell to SMBs
The devil is in the details: the tone of a subject line, timing of a phone call, recency of the point of contact, marketing cadence, and value proposition positioning — all impact sales. Yet many conversations tend to forget these basics and focus instead on new-age, shiny fixes.
Latest Posts
How Hospitality Brands Balance Global and Local in Their Marketing
Hotel brands face a marketing conundrum: Though they may be national or global brands, the average consumer experiences them on a local basis. So how should global hospitality brands manage this split?
LION’s DeRienzo: Programmatic Ads Will Be Part of ‘Indie’ Future
Matt DeRienzo, the interim executive director of the Local Independent Online News publishers ‘ association, is getting ready for what looks like a strong annual conference in Chicago this fall. We caught up with him to talk a bit about the state of “indie” local publishing.
Street Fight Daily: Android Pay Launch Date Still Unknown, PlaceIQ Bridging Online-Offline
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Contrary To Reports, Android Pay Not Launching This Week (TechCrunch)… Let’s Get Physical: PlaceIQ Chips Away At Online/Offline Attribution (AdExchanger)… Succeeding In Mobile Advertising: The Journey Begins (Marketing Land)…
Street Culture: SweetIQ Empowers Employees to Drive Independent Progress
Non-structured employee bonding opportunities help provide a new perspective on topics that have often already been discussed at length in meetings and via email. Sometimes the best results happen naturally as employees form relationships with each other outside of work.
Why Mobile Could Make or Break Your Back-to-School Campaign
The school year is right around the corner, which means that back-to-school shopping is already in full swing. Aside from the holidays, back-to-school is the second-largest selling season, so if retailers are not participating, they’re missing out. To be successful this school year, you need to know what trends are affecting how consumers are finding […]
Street Fight Daily: Amazon Tests Restaurant Deliveries, Etsy Highlights Local SMBs
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Amazon Is Quietly Testing a Plan to Take On GrubHub (Business Insider)… Etsy’s Updated Mobile App Lets You Locate Local Artisans (The Next Web)… Lyft Kills Off HotSpots as Uber Launches Copycat ‘Smart Routes’ Service (Recode)…
Moasis Debuts New Ad Platform, Seeks to Connect With Consumers’ Context
Today the company is debuting Moasis for Advertisers, which promises a one-stop shop for collecting and predictively analyzing valuable location-related data like weather, nearby events, and traffic. “Programmatic and mobile are virtually synonymous today,” said Moasis CMO Eric Nielsen.
Facebook’s Ad Platform for SMBs Has Come a Long Way, But Still Has Room to Grow
More and more local businesses are turning to Facebook to launch hyperlocal ad campaigns. And for good reason — the company has greatly enhanced its SMB ad offerings in the past year. As a relatively young ad medium, though, Facebook hasn’t really mastered the game yet.
Street Fight Daily: Yelp CEO on Google’s ‘Search Monopoly,’ In-Depth Look at Jet
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Google Goes After the App Interstitial: Protecting Consumers or Its Own Search Monopoly? (Search Engine Land)… Investors Have Poured More Than $220 Million Into This Man’s Plan to Beat Amazon (Business Insider)… Uber is Laying the Groundwork for Perpetual Rides in San Francisco (BuzzFeed)…
INFOGRAPHIC: The Complex SMB Marketing Ecosystem
As the head of digital strategy for a broadcaster operating local TV stations, I’ve been challenged to clearly understand the digital marketing space from an SMB perspective. So I’ve developed a chart, both to enhance my understanding and to assist SMBs in identifying potential suppliers.
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AI Won’t Fix Advertising – It May Scale Its Chaotic Nature