News and Analysis

Netflix Takes on YouTube. Should Podcasters and Advertisers Rejoice? Street Fight

Netflix Takes on YouTube. Should Podcasters and Advertisers Rejoice?

If we’re “Netflix and Chillin,’” consuming movies, streaming series, and other entertaining and inspiring content, why don’t we listen, watch and learn from podcast content creators too? Now we can. Netflix is entering the podcast market, leveraging its massive database of more than 300M subscribers (and growing). Podcasts also show no sign of slowing down […]

Church's Wants to Make Your Day Street Fight

Church’s Wants to Make Your Day

A new female buddy comedy is playing in theaters, and Church’s Texas Chicken not only has a cameo role, but a marketing tie-in. “One of Them Days” stars SZA, who had her own star turn in Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl half-time show earlier this month, and Keke Palmer (“Akeelah and the Bee)” playing roommates who […]

5 Reasons the Media Ignores (or Trashes) Your Brand Street Fight

5 Reasons the Media Ignores (or Trashes) Your Brand

As someone who has sat on “both sides of the desk” (as a marketer and now a research analyst, trend spotter, and content creator), I have a unique perspective on media exposure. The right press — online, conventional, or some combination — feeds your public image when consumers search for your brand. What MULO (multi-location) […]

Commentary

How Advertisers Can Combine Contextual and Local Targeting

How Advertisers Can Combine Contextual and Local Targeting

Many marketers who run multi-location campaigns run into the same pain point: “I need to create a campaign that has localized messaging that resonates with the specific regions I’m targeting while still remaining true to the overall brand voice.” Enter contextual advertising.

5 Priorities for Improving Local OTT Measurement

5 Priorities for Improving Local OTT Measurement

The refinement of local OTT measurement tactics should not take a backseat to the development of national approaches. Rather, to truly unlock the power of TV for advertisers—local and national, linear and streaming alike—measurement innovation should be a priority across the board. 

Level Up Your Customer Experience with Unified Touch Points

Level Up Your Customer Experience with Unified Touch Points

When it’s deployed strategically, technology can augment CX in both virtual and in-person settings. The key is for retailers to align their business models around excellent customer service to avoid introducing friction into the customer journey.

Latest Posts

Meet a New Flock of Local Influencers: An Interview with Emily Steele of Hummingbirds

Meet a New Flock of Local Influencers: An Interview with Emily Steele of Hummingbirds

Meltwater recently reported on “influencer fatigue” and asserted that only 3 percent of consumers are still swayed by the opinions of celebrities. But we all know that word-of-mouth marketing and targeted social media with the help of local influencers can still be highly effective tactics. A new breed (or should we say flock*) of influencers […]

LG Ad Solutions, Affinity Take On Closed-Loop CTV Targeting 

LG Ad Solutions, Affinity Take On Closed-Loop CTV Targeting 

LG Ad Solutions and Affinity Solutions are launching a new closed-loop CTV targeting and measurement solution that integrates Affinity’s purchase data with LG Ads’ CTV ad infrastructure to help brands optimize ad spend for conversions. The new solution, dubbed LoopIQ, launched just this week. According to the companies, the LoopIQ solution comes in response to […]

Geofencing: How to Leverage Location-based Ads

Geofencing: How to Leverage Location-based Ads

Geofencing is one of the most underutilized paid media strategies. Marketers in any vertical can use targeted location-based ads to serve personalized creative and messaging to the right audience, whether that user is on the other side of the globe or walking by the front door. What Is Geofencing? Geofencing is delivering digital ads based […]

Pets are a Profitable Priority for MULO Brands

BOOM: Pets are a Profitable Priority for MULO Brands

Consumers are spending on their “fur babies” these days in record numbers! Viewed as members of many families, dogs, cats, birds, guinea pigs, and even rabbits and snakes compel shoppers to take out their wallets to feed, tend to, and even dress their beloved animals. The market size for the the pets care segment was […]

Real Talk About Advertising ROI: Focusing on Fundamentals

Real Talk About Advertising ROI: Focusing on Fundamentals

Advertising isn’t an exact science: at best, advertisers might be able to establish cause and effect between a particular campaign and ROI, but the why of why a campaign succeeded or failed is often a mystery. Agencies and their clients will often have to move from quantitative analysis (each dollar spent translated to X amount […]

Survey: Despite Data Privacy Fears, Consumers Eagerly Embrace AI to Save Money

Survey: Despite Data Privacy Fears, Consumers Eagerly Embrace AI to Save Money

Consumers are leery of many things, but artificial intelligence doesn’t appear to be one of them. That’s according to a new survey by UserTesting, which found that despite concerns over data privacy — and a general uneasiness about brands using their personal information without consent — the majority of Americans are eager to embrace AI […]

Yelp Launches Index to Combat Deceptive Reviews

Yelp Launches Index to Combat Deceptive Reviews

With fraudulent reviews on the rise, Yelp is making a change. Since 2012, Yelp has placed more than 4,900 Compensated Activity Alerts and Suspicious Activity Alerts, but for consumers, it can be difficult — if not impossible — to tell which businesses are bad actors on the platform. Now, in an effort to combat the […]

Locality Says Start Your Election Spending

Locality Says Start Your Election Spending

Election season will be here before you know it, and TV remains the star platform for political campaign media spending. According to AdImpact, political ad spending is projected to reach upwards of $10 billion in media spending, with TV (broadcast, cable, streaming, etc.) on track to rake in half of that number. Locality, a TV-advertising […]

Arity and Tapestri Drive2Earn Partnership to Revolutionize Data Sharing

A strategic partnership between Arity, a leading data and analytics company, and Tapestri, an app that rewards users for sharing their data, has the potential to transform the way millions of drivers perceive and harness the value of their own location data. Together, the two firms are launching Drive2Earn, a new feature available in the […]

BUST: A Hard Landing as Soft Surroundings Files for Bankruptcy

BUST: A Hard Landing as Soft Surroundings Files for Bankruptcy

Here we go again…another beloved retailer shutters its brick-and-mortar operations. Soft Surroundings filed for bankruptcy this week. This MULO (multi-location) women’s clothing brand once had 80 locations physical locations (reduced to 44) and is now shuttering all of them. The company, which released its first catalog in 1999, also sold home goods and accessories. However, […]