News and Analysis
Hyper-Local Cultural Moments Are Changing Media Strategy
National campaigns are no longer enough to connect with local audiences. As brands shift toward hyper-local media planning, cultural moments like Pride offer a blueprint for how localized execution can drive more authentic engagement and stronger marketing outcomes. National brands have long relied on centralized media strategies to deliver consistent campaigns across every market. But […]
Jersey Mike’s IPO Highlights the Power of Disciplined MULO Growth
Jersey Mike’s decision to file for an initial public offering comes at a time when restaurant operators face a difficult operating environment marked by cautious consumers, higher labor costs, and slowing industry growth. Yet the sandwich chain has continued to expand its footprint while improving profitability, positioning itself as one of the restaurant industry’s strongest […]
Kroger’s Giant Eagle Deal Signals the Next Battle in Retail Media
Less than two years after regulators blocked its proposed acquisition of Albertsons, Kroger is back in the acquisition market. This time, the company is taking a smaller and more targeted approach, announcing an agreement to acquire regional grocery chain Giant Eagle in a deal valued at approximately $1.65 billion. At first glance, the transaction appears […]
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 That framing is outdated.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
Real-Time Ad Market Intelligence Arrives Built on Verified Spend Data
Advertising market intelligence is shifting toward real-time visibility. Guideline has launched Market Monitor™, a new weekly insights subscription built entirely on verified, transaction-level advertising spend data—giving agencies, brands, and investors a faster, clearer view of global media investment trends. As media buying becomes more dynamic, the move reflects a broader shift toward data-driven decisions grounded […]
Flamel.ai Launches Luna to Fix Franchise Marketing Execution
For years, franchise and multi-location brands have faced a persistent breakdown between strategy and execution. Corporate teams build campaigns designed to scale nationally, but at the local level, those franchise marketing campaigns often fragment—deployed inconsistently, delayed, or not executed at all. This week, Flamel.ai introduced a platform designed to close that gap. The company announced […]
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 […]
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