News and Analysis
What Innovid Brings to the Mediaocean Table
Once the Mediaocean acquisition of Innovid (for upwards of $500 million) goes through, the company will have one tough tech stack. “Being able to manage everything from Meta to TikTok to Snap, to now Reddit, is the latest one,” said Mediaocean CMO Aaron Goldman. Managing ads inside walled gardens is something that Flashtalking does very […]
MULO Brands With Soul November Picks: The Season of Giving
Rather than single out one brand this month, we will focus on how several MULO (multi-location) brands are leaning into giving this holiday season with tie-ins to philanthropic efforts. Aligning a brand with a specific charitable effort can be risky, so doing due diligence before selecting a cause is imperative today. You certainly don’t want […]
Does Holiday Ad Spend Pay Off? (And Early Indicators from Skai)
As we publish this, Black Friday is less than 48 hours away. Although data shows that people are now taking advantage of year-round sale days, the next week is still considered a “big boost” time for many MULO (multi-location) brands and the agencies that buy their media. According to up-to-the-minute ad buying data from advertising […]
Commentary
CDPs Can Deliver Bottom-Line Results — If Used as Intended
A CDP won’t necessarily replace as many tools in the business’ tech stack as some business leaders might hope. We need to understand a CDP’s real capabilities and set reasonable expectations for their overall utility.
The Telltale Signs of Fake Reviews
Curtis Boyd is the founder of a Southern California-based company, The Transparency Co, which has gained significant attention in recent months for the technology Boyd has developed to detect fake reviews at scale. Boyd’s company has recently secured government contracts to help ferret out fake reviews online.
Ecommerce Design: How Smart UI Choices Boost Engagement and Conversion
In ecommerce, conversions are considered the most important metric to track. However, an increase in engagement can matter just as much: the more people interact with your pages, the more likely they are to return and convert later as well as to promote your business among their own network.
Latest Posts
How LiveRamp Helps Brands Manage First-Party Data
Is the juice worth the squeeze? That’s what SaaS company LiveRamp wants clients to ask themselves when they opt for the relative ease of scaling ad campaigns in walled gardens like Facebook. Consumer perceptions and privacy regulations are continuing to evolve, and personally identifiable information (PII) via first-party data is a brand’s most valuable asset. […]
The Top 7 Challenges Multi-Location (MULO) Brands Face Today
Whether a multi-location brand has 10 storefronts or >1,000, the challenges faced today are similar. Over the past five years, cosmic shifts in how people work, live, travel, and shop have surfaced a new range of consumer trends. “Near me” is a common part of search behavior today. And the distance someone is willing to […]
Survey Reveals Why Customers Delete Branded Apps
The number one reason consumers delete branded apps is to free up phone storage space. According to a survey from Airship and Sapio Research, 32% percent of respondents cited space as the top reason. In-app ads, if multitudinous, were cited as the second highest reason people deleted branded apps (30% of respondents). Sapio Research and […]
GroundTruth CMO: ‘Most Brand Marketers Struggle with Marketing Vanity Metrics’
The role of a marketer changed drastically in 2023. Rather than being centered on brand, advertising, and digital marketing, brand marketers today are focusing more heavily on strategic areas, like marketing analytics, revenue growth, innovation, and market entry strategy. Surveys show that while firms are slowing their investments in customer relationship management systems, brand building, […]
Hair Care Today…$41B Tomorrow: The Growth of a Category
Hair care is a rapidly-growing category for multi-location brands. As part of our future-forward series, we’ll cover categories that are on the upswing in the MULO (multi-location) ecosystem, along with trends that will impact individual brands’ survival and growth. Intellectual capital has value, but what’s ON our heads can be as lucrative as what’s in […]
Social Marketing Gets Redefined in the Era of AI
In an era where everyone is trying to get more done in less time, generative AI has become a valuable tool for social marketing professionals. According to a new survey from Sprout Social, conducted by the digital insights firm Cint, 71% of social media marketers have already started using AI and machine learning tools, and […]
The Taco War Rages On
Publicity stunt or legal battle? Or, perhaps, a little of both. In case you’ve been too busy over the past week to track the battle antics. Here’s a brief summary. Taco John’s trademarked the term “Taco Tuesday” back in 1989. Taco Bell is now taking legal action to invalidate the trademark so all taco-selling brands […]
Billionaire Steve Kuhn Finds New Use for Empty Retail Spaces
What’s that new use? You guessed it…pickleball! But financier and Major League Pickleball founder Steve Kuhn called his new multi-location brand Picklemall. Taking full advantage of large empty spaces in shopping malls, the company will launch its first indoor pickleball concept in Arizona Mills in Tempe in July 2023. It expects to open 50 locations […]
Amperity Getting Ahead of Cookieless Targeting
Google’s plan to eradicate the third-party cookie is still on track for 2024, but it is starting slowly, turning off just 1% of these tracking pieces of code in Chrome in Q1. Other companies are already taking similar steps to wean their measurement systems to prepare for cookieless targeting, and Amperity is no exception. The […]
5 Brands Using QR Codes to Drive Traffic to Online Platforms
The predictions were correct. QR codes are back — in a big way. After debuting in the 1990s, then losing relevance in the early 2000s, QR codes came roaring back to life in 2020. Now, three years after QR codes re-entered the mainstream during the Covid-19 pandemic, some of the biggest brands in the world […]
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