News and Analysis
What Standard Cognition’s Big Play Means for Autonomous Retail
If autonomous checkout systems ever go mainstream, it will be because retailers finally figured out how to effectively harness in-store cameras to determine where customers are and what items they’re holding in real-time. Reaching that goal has proven elusive to AI technology providers thus far, but a San Francisco-based startup called Standard Cognition is hoping that its recent acquisition of Explorer.ai, a mapping and computer vision firm, will be the catalyst that’s necessary to accelerate growth and expand into new retail verticals.
Privacy-Forward Search Engine DuckDuckGo Partners with Apple Maps
Making a big splash in privacy, the ongoing story that has dominated location data-based marketing buzz in 2019, DuckDuckGo, the search engine that does not store user data in order to sell pricey ads, announced that it is using Apple’s MapKit JS to power searches. While the search engine’s results are sought out by far fewer users than search industry leader Google’s, the growth DuckDuckGo is experiencing further validates the impression the tech media has practically been screaming about this year: The winds on privacy are definitively changing, and data-driven companies that fail to heed those changes are in for quite a storm.
Foursquare Launches Self-Serve Audience Segments Accessible via The Trade Desk
Having pivoted from a location-centric social app of sorts to a location intelligence platform, Foursquare has positioned itself well to offer brands attributable marketing success and verified data points at a time when concerns about both data quality and privacy are as widespread as ever. Foursquare says it throws out about 80% of the third-party data it consumes, an act intended to preserve the quality of its largely first-party data store.
Commentary
How Can Local Merchants Ensure That Digital Searchers Know They’re Open?
Knowing your hours of operation is one of the first searches that customers undertake as they navigate their options when they look for things to do and places to go. Being available to potential customers means managing your store hours as a dynamic and scale-able data asset.
Ad Tech, Local Media and the 2016 Political Campaign
In this year’s presidential campaign, news and information consumers can be reached via a wide range of channels, and media buys can be executed in milliseconds. Now that local inventory has joined this channel, political camps have the ability to execute local campaigns on a massive scale.
How the Rise of Virtual Reality Could Impact Local Marketing
With each passing tech revolution, response time diminishes while opportunity cost grows. Local media companies that were late to the consumer internet or the smartphone revolution already know this pain. With VR and AR, local startups will be more agile to experiment than larger incumbents.
Latest Posts
Street Fight Daily: The Magnitude of Instagram’s API Switch, PayPal Acquires Mobile Commerce Startup
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Why an Instagram Tweak Spells the Beginning of a Multibillion-Dollar Industry (Recode)… PayPal Makes Its First Acquisition After Splitting From eBay (Fortune)… Google Express Plans to Shut Down Its Two Delivery Hubs (Recode)…
A New Political Campaign Methodology Connects Supporters With Localized Social Media
It’s self-evident that campaigns should be promoted at local levels, where word-of-mouth buzz can truly happen within neighborhoods. As the 2016 national election approaches, campaigns have the opportunity to harness local social more directly than ever before.
Sponsored Content: Localizing Your Pay-Per-Click Campaigns
After getting listed in online directories, setting up SEO-optimized websites, and creating profiles on popular social channels, running a PPC campaign is the next logical step for local business marketers. This post is part of a series on strategies in local digital marketing, sponsored by Mediative.
Street Fight Daily: Amazon Might Crowdsource Delivery, Square Introduces Apple Watch App
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Amazon Flex Could Be a New Way to Get Your Packages, Report Says (Mashable)… Square Cash for the Apple Watch Lets You Send Money From Your Wrist (The Next Web)… Here’s How the Post Office is Taking On UPS, FedEx, and Amazon (Fortune)…
Why Online Marketplaces Will Continue to Beat Word-of-Mouth Platforms in the Battle for Local Business
People seek the opinions of their friends. They care what they think, and they trust them to make recommendations on everything from a good meal to a good mechanic. It’s word of mouth marketing — the most prized of its kind since the Stone Age. And its staying power undeniably supports the rationale for a […]
7 Ways For SMBs to Maximize the Benefits of Online Scheduling
Before adding new platforms to the marketing mix, merchants should fully utilize the scheduling systems they’ve already implemented at their businesses. Here are seven examples of ways that merchants can maximize the benefits of online booking tools.
Street Fight Daily: Uber Launches Food Delivery, Facebook’s Ad Tech Strategy
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… UberEats Comes to San Francisco, Where Food Delivery Is Hot (Recode)… With Retooled Atlas Under the Hood, Facebook Closes in on Linking Ads to Sales Across Devices (AdAge)… Retail Tech Meets Consumer Reality: Cracking the Consumer Path to Purchase Code (PYMNTS.com)…
What Local Marketers Can Learn From the Trials of Google Plus
With Google’s recent announcement that Google Plus will be decoupled from YouTube and other services, industry watchers are predicting that this may be the beginning of the end for the social network. Here are a few lessons a local marketer might learn from the social network’s challenges.
Sponsored Content: Home Improvement Chains Should Aim for More, Better Customer Engagement
Lowe’s and Home Depot duked it out in this month, with Home Depot roundly trouncing its competitor on key areas of local presence. Lowe’s showed in local advertising, but faces challenges elsewhere. Digital marketing company Where2GetIt crunched numbers to compare how the two are branding locally and how that is affecting local consumers…
Case Study: Restaurant Group Integrates Data for Targeted Customer Marketing
Fig & Olive’s guest management system has been set up to match reservations to POS data, which allows marketer Matthew Joseph to track the dining habits and visit frequency of guests. This information is then used to run automated marketing campaigns.
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Meta Is Automating Ads, But Brands Still Face a Bigger Problem