News and Analysis
Walmart and Magnite Signal Retail Media’s Next Phase
Walmart’s new partnership with Magnite may signal a broader shift in how retail media networks operate. Rather than requiring advertisers to work within retailer-controlled ecosystems, companies are increasingly looking to make their first-party data available across the platforms agencies already use. For multi-location brands and agencies, the move points toward a more interoperable future for […]
What the FBI’s DOOH Strategy Teaches Marketers
Digital out-of-home (DOOH) advertising has traditionally been viewed as a channel for building brand awareness, driving store visits, and influencing purchase decisions. But one of its longest-running use cases highlights a different strength: its ability to generate real-world action quickly and at scale. The Out of Home Advertising Association of America (OAAA) recently announced the […]
Scooter’s Coffee Growth and the Future of Franchise Marketing
As multi-location brands push deeper into expansion mode, one of the biggest operational challenges is no longer simply opening new locations. It is maintaining consistent customer engagement, local visibility, and brand standards across hundreds of markets simultaneously. Scooter’s Coffee is increasingly confronting that reality firsthand. The rapidly growing drive-thru coffee chain, Scooter’s Coffee, has expanded […]
Commentary
Reviews Are Now a Growth System for Multi-Location Brands
For years, many multi-location brands treated reviews as a reputation issue. Something to monitor. Something to clean up. Something to escalate when a location had a public problem. That framing is outdated. Reviews now sit much closer to performance than many brands still acknowledge. They influence whether a customer trusts a location enough to call, book, […]
AI Won’t Fix Advertising – It May Scale Its Chaotic Nature
Once again, the advertising industry is in the midst of a technological gold rush. The current hype around AI reflects a familiar pattern: sweeping claims, breathless predictions and a rush to declare that it will finally “fix” everything. It won’t. While AI has transformative potential, it isn’t a cure-all to some of advertising’s biggest problems. […]
Meta Is Automating Ads, But Brands Still Face a Bigger Problem
Meta is automating ad execution, but the bigger problem for brands remains unresolved: deciding where to invest across channels to actually drive growth. The era of needing specialist teams to manage campaign execution is ending. Platforms are taking over more of that work, handling campaign construction, delivery optimization, and in-flight management within their own environments. […]
Latest Posts
Weather Is Reshaping Marketing – How Brands Are Turning Storms Into Sales
When weather shifts, consumer intent spikes and brands that adapt messaging in real time are capturing the most valuable moments to drive action. Spring is trying to spring in the Northeast but so far, the vibes have been reluctant. But that doesn’t hinder weather-reactive marketing; it presents new opportunities for warm-weather retail activities and products. […]
AI Is Rewriting Media Planning – Basis’ Compass Turns Briefs Into Campaigns in Minutes
Media planning is entering its fastest transformation in decades. What once took days (or weeks) of assembling briefs, analyzing data, and building presentations is now being compressed into minutes as agentic AI in advertising automates the core of AI media planning. That shift is now operational. With Compass, Basis has introduced an AI advertising platform that […]
Meta Is Automating Ads, But Brands Still Face a Bigger Problem
Meta is automating ad execution, but the bigger problem for brands remains unresolved: deciding where to invest across channels to actually drive growth. The era of needing specialist teams to manage campaign execution is ending. Platforms are taking over more of that work, handling campaign construction, delivery optimization, and in-flight management within their own environments. […]
Why Restaurant PR Matters for Local Growth
A great PR campaign can make or break the future of a restaurant location. But in the case of multi-location restaurant brands, this requires strong collaboration between local or franchise leadership and the overall brand to ensure a consistent, coordinated effort. The unique challenges of restaurant PR Running a PR campaign for a restaurant is […]
Your Locations Show Up in AI – But Are They Recommended?
A consumer asks an AI assistant for a local business recommendation near one of your locations. Your brand location appears in the response. By most current measures, that’s a win — and it is. But for MULO marketers managing local search performance for dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of locations, presence in AI-generated responses is […]
Klaviyo’s New AI Agent Builds Full Campaigns From a Single Prompt
AI is rapidly changing how marketing gets done and Klaviyo is pushing that shift further by introducing tools that can generate and execute entire campaigns from a single prompt. With its new Composer feature and expanded AI agents, the company is moving toward a model where marketers define outcomes and software handles the execution. Klaviyo’s […]
Innovid Helps Marketers Navigate Reddit
Making sense of Reddit and the sub-reddits of its 100,000+ communities has always been a challenge for advertisers in a space that is traditionally ad-unfriendly. But independent software platform Innovid, which helps with the creation, delivery, measurement, and optimization of advertising, says the expansion of its Social Ads Manager can bring some order to what often seems […]
As AI Adoption Grows, Nearly Half of Advertisers Plan to Bring Media Planning In-House
As AI reshapes how campaigns are planned, executed, and optimized, a growing number of advertisers are reconsidering one of the industry’s foundational structures: the role of external agencies in media planning. New research suggests that nearly half of brands are preparing to bring more of that function in-house, signaling a broader shift toward control, data […]
Programmatic DOOH Spend Set to Surge 49% as U.S. Marketers Shift Budgets
Programmatic digital out-of-home is entering a new phase of maturity in the U.S., shifting from an emerging test channel into a core component of digital media strategy. New research from VIOOH suggests that marketers are not only increasing investment sharply, but also rethinking how DOOH fits within broader programmatic and performance-driven planning. The headline number […]
Digital Remedy Takes on the Biggest Pain in Ad Performance
Advertising performance is becoming harder—not easier—to measure, especially for agencies managing campaigns across multiple channels and markets. A new platform from Digital Remedy aims to simplify that complexity, giving marketers a unified view of ad performance across CTV, display, audio, and more—and changing how they understand what actually drives results. The new Digital Remedy platform, […]
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