News and Analysis

Early Spending Results are In! MULO BOOMs this Holiday Season StreetFight

Early Spending Results are In! MULO BOOMs this Holiday Season

As of this writing, Black Friday and Cyber Monday (now seemingly extended to Cyber Week) are behind us.  MULO (multi-location) pundits and agencies involved in retail and restaurant analyses and predictions are starting to call the winners and losers in the holiday Street Fight, which now involves battles between brands, products, SMBs, and MULO chains, […]

Street Fight LIVE Insights: Stopping at C-Stores with Mike Templeton

Street Fight LIVE Insights: Stopping at C-Stores with Mike Templeton

Some people collect snow globes or stickers on road trips. Others boast that they’ve seen all the National Parks. Still others have a thing for selfies in front of weird vintage structures. But Mike Templeton, one of the speakers at Street Fight LIVE stops at and collects insights from convenience stores (C-stores), the unsung heroes […]

The MULO Dozen: November in Review Street Fight

The MULO Dozen: November in Review

As November and 2024 draws to a close, news from MULO (multi-location) brands has hardly slowed down! In fact, this season is a make-or-break for retailers, restaurants, C-stores, and service businesses as consumers travel near and far to eat, shop, and squeeze in those errands before the year ends. Of course, the biggest news of […]

Commentary

The Creator Economy Accelerates

Adobe’s annual Max event is happening this week in LA, its first physical rendition since Covid lockdowns sidelined the event world. Max is all about the creator economy, the emerging crop of individuals and SMBs that create content. This has been Adobe’s target market for two decades. This all manifests in the ever-growing Creative Cloud… […]

How Post-Pandemic Shopping Habits Affect Black Friday and Cyber Monday

Consumers aren’t holding off on gift purchases until the day after Thanksgiving. Retailers who’ve always counted on Black Friday in particular and the Cyber Five (Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday) in general to push them into profitability for the year need to develop new strategies based on data.

Ad Tech and Privacy

Why Omnichannel Advertising Is Essential in the Current Economy

Faced with economic uncertainties from inflation and recession to war and prolonged supply-chain disruption, marketers more than ever need to lean into omnichannel advertising.

Latest Posts

To Market, To Market: Trends in the MULO Grocery Store Industry

To Market, To Market: Trends in the MULO Grocery Store Industry

The multi-location grocery store industry is no longer just traditional grocers. Target, drug stores like CVS and Walgreens, and convenience stores now stock shelves with household staples. “Traditional” grocery stores have expanded their product offerings to include greeting cards, flowers, and hardware items. Specialty grocers abound, and many niche brands are expanding to new geographies […]

Microsoft Advertising Honors Tinuiti

Microsoft Advertising Honors Tinuiti

Now that Microsoft Advertising has named Tinuiti its Global Client Partner of the Year for the first time. Josh Brisco, Group VP of Acquisition Media at the largest independent performance-marketing firm in the U.S., reflected on this latest recognition. Although being named Global Client Partner of the Year is a first for Tinuiti from Microsoft, […]

Data Clean Rooms Won’t End the Identity Battle

Data Clean Rooms Won’t End the Identity Battle

Since Google’s first date for the end of third-party cookies, the industry has continued to search for viable alternatives. Among the plethora of proposed solutions, data clean rooms have sprung to the top of industry-leading agendas as a potential solution for the eventual depreciation of third-party cookies. And the theory makes some sense – it’s […]

Back-to-School Shopping Is Happening Earlier Than Ever — Retailers Prepare

As kids across the country empty their desks and prepare for a long summer break, brand marketers are working overtime to solidify their 2023 back-to-school campaigns. With back-to-school sales seeming to start earlier and earlier each year, researchers at the digital insights firm Cint recently conducted a survey to gauge consumer interest around back to […]

Curb Wants Brand Enthusiasm for DOOH

Curb Wants Brand Enthusiasm for DOOH

Generating more than two billion impressions annually across 25,000 in-taxi media screens in most major DMAs, Curb (formerly Verifone Taxi Systems), a DOOH advertising and payment platform for car services, reaches “captive” audiences of millions. Its Taxi TV screens offer geotargeting, real-time RSS data integration, dayparting, and POI targeting to clients. Curb has been a […]

Hair Care for Men...Beyond Shaves and Haircuts

BOOM: Hair Care for Men…Beyond Shaves and Haircuts

Hair care post-pandemic is a rapidly-growing multi-location (MULO) category. As we reported recently, the industry was up 17 percent in 2022 and is expected to hit $41B by 2026. Women still spend more on hair care than men. They invest an average of $228 yearly on haircuts and $24 per month on hair products versus […]

Thumbtack, Scorpion Streamline Marketing for Home Services |

Thumbtack, Scorpion Partnership Streamlines Marketing for Home Services Pros

The digital martech provider Scorpion is partnering with the home management platform Thumbtack, in a first-of-its-kind integration announced just this week. With the deal in place, Thumbtack’s customer base of small business owners and solopreneurs working in the home services industry will be able to utilize Scorpion’s advertising and communications tools to get more leads […]

Simon Says "Your Product is In-Stock!" The Rise of Product Search Today and How MULO Brands Should Respond

Simon Says “Your Product is In-Stock!” The Rise of Product Search Today and How Brands Should Respond

Simon Property Group recently expanded its Simon Search technology, enabling mall-goers to determine if the brands they want are in-store,  before they head out to shop and spend. Product search before visiting a multi-location (or other) business is nothing new. Google reports that 74 percent of brick-and-mortar shoppers will do some online sleuthing before they […]

How Audio Advertising Became a Blindspot for U.S. Brands

How Audio Advertising Became a Blindspot for U.S. Brands

With the state of the U.S. economy still unclear, more advertisers are tightening their belts and re-evaluating their media mix. In a recent study by WARC, 96% of retail and CPG marketers said they’re evolving their advertising approach and tapping into digital audio advertising as a way to ensure a smooth path-to-purchase. According to Paul […]

Getting Your Local, Foreign ‘Phrase’ Just Right

Getting Your Local, Foreign ‘Phrase’ Just Right

Phrase is a global leader in enterprise localization software. The Phrase Localization Suite powers the entire localization ecosystem for global businesses, connecting, automating  and managing  high-quality localized content at speed and scale. The Phrase software can handle more than 500 languages, supporting 50+ file types and processing 2B+ words monthly. It has 200K global users. […]