Sonic Turns Drink Customization Into Traffic Strategy
Restaurant chains are increasingly looking beyond burgers, sandwiches and value meals to create new reasons for customers to visit. Specialty beverages have emerged as one of the industry’s most active battlegrounds, and Sonic Drive-In believes its long history of drink customization gives it an advantage. The trend extends well beyond another seasonal menu cycle. The […]
Programmatic DOOH Still Isn’t Bought Like Digital
Programmatic DOOH (digital out-of-home) has spent years promising to make physical media easier to buy like digital advertising. New global data suggests that transition is well underway, but also shows how far DOOH still has to go before it becomes a routine component of the digital media plan. The World Out of Home Organization’s inaugural […]
Lowe’s Is Merging Marketing With Commerce
Lowe’s has made an organizational change that says more about the future of multi-location marketing than a typical executive promotion. The home-improvement retailer has expanded CMO Jen Wilson’s role to include Lowes.com and its third-party marketplace. Wilson, now executive vice president and chief marketing and digital commerce officer, already oversaw marketing, loyalty, personalization and Lowe’s […]
MULO Brands Are Reinvesting in Human Service
For years, the direction of store and restaurant technology seemed clear: move more transactions into apps, kiosks and self-checkout, and ask employees to do less of the routine work. That investment has made many visits faster. It has also made the human service interactions that remain more consequential. Aritzia, Macy’s and McDonald’s are approaching that […]
Franchising Has a Local Marketing Execution Problem
By every headline number, franchising is having a fine year. The International Franchise Association projects industry output will top $920 billion in 2026, with franchise GDP climbing 1.8% and nearly 13,000 new units opening. On a boardroom slide, that’s a growth story. Walk the sidewalk in front of any given location, and the story looks […]
Yelp Moves Voice AI From Conversation to Conversion
Yelp and Hatch are among the first platforms integrating OpenAI’s GPT-Live-1, giving restaurant and service-business callers more natural conversations with AI. The resulting voice AI is connecting conversational models with the location data, business rules and operating systems required to turn a call into a booking. Voice AI is getting better at sounding human. OpenAI’s […]
The Shopping Mall Is Becoming a Media Platform
The shopping mall has spent years evolving beyond a collection of stores. Dining, entertainment, events and other experiences have increasingly turned major shopping centers into places designed to give consumers more reasons to visit and stay. Now that evolution is moving into advertising. Simon Property Group has launched Simon Media Network, a commerce media platform […]
Ace Hardware Makes Retail Media More Local
Ace Hardware is expanding its retail media network around weather, store proximity, customer intent, and local inventory. Ace’s approach is showing how physical context can give retailers an advantage that audience targeting alone cannot. Retail media networks have generally been built around first-party customer data and proximity to a transaction. Ace Hardware is adding the […]
AI Is Changing the Ad Fraud Fight
Ad fraud isn’t new to anyone running acquisition budgets across dozens or hundreds of locations. Multi-location marketers and agencies have dealt with click farms, bot traffic, and inflated app installs for years. What’s changing is the machinery behind the fraud. AI-driven ad fraud can now manufacture outcomes that mimic campaign success at a scale and level […]
When Falling Store Traffic Isn’t a Marketing Problem
Lululemon plans to increase marketing as sales weaken across stores and ecommerce. Its challenge is determining which parts of the customer journey need fixing before applying the same response across an 825-location network. Lululemon plans to increase its marketing investment as it attempts to reverse declining sales and weakening brand sentiment. But before spending more […]
Yext Pushes AI Visibility From Measurement to Action
AI visibility is creating a new scale problem for multi-location brands: individual locations need to remain accurate, active and relevant across more digital surfaces than ever. Yext’s latest expansion reflects a broader shift from monitoring AI discovery to actively managing it. Knowing whether a brand appears in ChatGPT, Gemini or other AI-driven discovery experiences is […]
OOH Growth Signals Opportunity for Brands
World Cup-fueled revenue surge is highlighting how OOH has evolved beyond broad awareness. Digital inventory, localized activation and improved measurement are making the channel more flexible, relevant and accountable. Out-of-home advertising entered the summer with strong momentum as major events, digital-first advertisers and more flexible buying options helped drive increased spending. U.S. OOH revenue rose […]
AI Hallucinations: The Risk for Multi-Location Brands
AI search is quickly becoming a default research step before a customer visits a store, books a service, or calls a support line. For multi-location and enterprise brands, that often means AI-generated answers are shaping decisions across hundreds or thousands of locations, and those answers aren’t always accurate. When AI is asked about a brand, […]
Modern Media Planning Requires More Than Better Technology
Marketers have never had more data or more sophisticated technology at their disposal. AI can optimize campaigns in real time, while modern media planning tools can model thousands of budget scenarios in minutes. Yet many brands still struggle to turn those capabilities into better marketing performance. The problem isn’t necessarily the technology. It’s that the […]
DOOH Makes Its Case for More Digital Ad Dollars
Digital out-of-home advertising (DOOH) has spent years adding screens, data and programmatic buying capabilities. A series of recent developments suggests the next phase will be less about adding inventory and more about making that inventory easier to buy, measure and verify. Two announcements this week illustrate that shift. VIOOH has partnered with Screenverse to make […]
Samsung Turning Commercial Screens Into Ad Inventory
The digital screens already operating inside restaurants, retailers, hotels, gyms, and other commercial properties are increasingly becoming more than signage. They are becoming media inventory. Samsung Electronics America and Smartify Media are accelerating that transition through a partnership connecting Samsung commercial displays to Smartify’s digital out-of-home (DOOH) advertising network. Samsung VXT Ads, Powered by Smartify, […]
Where CTV Fits in the Media Mix
CTV is becoming more measurable, but the bigger shift may be how that measurement influences media allocation. New Lifesight research suggests CTV can affect search, social and second-screen behavior. Connected TV has steadily moved beyond its traditional role as an upper-funnel awareness channel. As marketers gain more ways to connect CTV exposure with digital activity […]
How CKE Is Scaling Local Marketing
CKE Restaurants is building a more centralized local marketing infrastructure across Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s while moving parts of its marketing closer to individual regions and locations. For multi-location brands, the strategy shows how automation can make enterprise scale and local relevance increasingly complementary. For a restaurant company operating thousands of locations, the local marketing […]
Scorpion Pushes MULO Advertising Earlier in the Journey
Scorpion is expanding its Google Ads offering with Demand Gen, giving multi-location brands another way to reach consumers before they actively search for a nearby service provider. Paid search has long been a cornerstone of local customer acquisition. A consumer searches for a nearby home-services provider, attorney, pest-control company, or other service, and brands compete […]
Why Brands Need Every Location to Be Agent Ready
Agentic commerce, or the process of AI agents helping users research, compare, and, increasingly, complete local purchases, has moved from concept to reality. For a single-location business, getting ready for this means cleaning up one website, one set of listings, one menu, one booking system, to make sure their customer journey works equally well for […]