Breaking Boundaries: Microsoft’s App Store and the Epic vs. Google Ripple Effect

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It has been an earth-shattering few weeks in the app ecosystem. First, in a groundbreaking move that has sent shockwaves through the tech industry, Microsoft has announced its plans to launch an app store within the Apple App Store – a move that holds significant implications for app developers, especially those in the gaming industry. […]

Retail Media Players to Watch in 2023

Retail Media Players to Watch in 2023

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The recent announcement by Lowe’s that it would be taking more of its retail media network in-house this year is only the beginning. Change is happening throughout the industry, as the largest global retailers become media companies in their own right. In the coming year, even more retail brands are expected to turn their existing websites into full-fledged media networks.

Social Selling Helps Boost Sales

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I define social selling as the process of researching, connecting, and interacting with prospects and customers on social media networks. It focuses on nurturing leads, building brand authenticity and building trust with your prospects. 

Leading firms have taken advantage of social selling and have begun reaping the benefits it offers. Research has shown that 70% of sales professionals are active on LinkedIn for business purposes, 89% believe social networking platforms such as LinkedIn are important in closing deals, and 64% of sales reps who invest time in social media are hitting their sales quota.

Follow the Money: Will Wearables Inflect in 2020?

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Apple is far ahead with Watch and Airpods, which may have sold 3 million units since Black Friday. Google meanwhile acquired Fitbit to buttress its wearables play. Amazon and Microsoft launched wearables lines in the past quarter, and smaller players like Bose and Snap are planting seeds for a wearables future.

There’s an underlying driver for this activity that goes back to the perennial analyst exercise of “following the money.” This is all about extrapolating product roadmaps based on tech giants’ motivations. This is often to future-proof their core businesses or diversify revenue in the face of maturing products.

December Focus: The Connected Consumer

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When looking at several interlocking tech trends — wearables, IoT, smart devices, autonomous vehicles — one common thread emerges: our escalating connectivity as humans. All these technologies are increasingly melded with our senses as the computing “abstraction layer” diminishes.

In other words, device interfaces continue to get more intuitive and automatic. That can be seen in the progression of personal computing from UI milestones like the mouse to mobile-centric touch controls. Now, we have biometric tracking on the Apple Watch and ambient alerts to AirPods.

The “connected consumer” will be Street Fight’s editorial focus for the month of December.

Alexa, Podcasts, and the Role of Voice in Today’s Marketing

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The increasing popularity of smart speakers, digital assistants, and podcasts means we need to begin thinking differently about voice and marketing. That includes tailoring online content to users and how they engage with it, making voice functionality a part of the sales funnel, and creating podcasts or partnering with influencers to reach audiences in a new way. With the right approach, a creative brand could get a considerable head start in this new but quickly developing marketing landscape.

Apple Strikes a Foreboding Tone with Big Ad on Privacy

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Apple’s privacy-first policies should prove beneficial for the company and for the hundreds of millions of people who use its products. Still, the iPhone maker’s ad, light in tone as its soundtrack may be, strikes a decisively dark note representative of broader national anxiety about Silicon Valley and the danger of its increasingly unavoidable products. Beneath the ad’s veneer of levity, thinly constructed in the form of a small guard dog and man wary of using a urinal too close to his neighbor, the video sends a clear warning to smartphone users entrusting their private information to rival phone makers: The intimate details of your lives may already be compromised. Lean into your worries about your data’s theft and monetization, and fork over 10 Benjamins at the nearest Apple store for the sake of your own security.

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Consumers Willing to Forgo Privacy, For a Price

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New research indicates that consumers are actually more aware of how their personal information is being used today than they were last year, with those ages 55 and above showing the greatest level of awareness. These consumers are increasingly willing to share their personally identifiable information with brand marketers—with one caveat. They want a reward for doing it.

LBMA Vidcast: Postmates Locks Down $100M, Walgreens Hooks Up With Microsoft

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On this week’s Location-Based Marketing Association podcast: Coty’s AR smart mirror for hair, JDA + InContext for in-store ops, Postmates gets $100M, Safegraph launches IP-to-Place, Germany says no to Amazon Dash, Walgreens partners with Microsoft.

Kroger CEO Offers Closer Look at Grocery Giant’s Tech Innovation at NRF 2019

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Among Kroger’s latest innovation is a partnership with online grocer Ocado. Kroger is licensing Ocado’s technology—the only grocer in the United States to do so—in order to benefit from its digital-native mastery of automated warehouse operations and on-demand delivery. The company will be expanding its number of warehouses powered by Ocado’s technology in 2019.

food

After Amazon-Whole Foods, Microsoft-Kroger: The Grocery Revolution Is Happening

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Microsoft and Kroger are teaming up, challenging Amazon’s dominance in grocery innovation and pushing back against its takeover of an increasing number of corporate verticals, including cloud infrastructure in the form of Amazon Web Services. (Street Fight’s Mike Boland has predicted that Amazon will sell its grocery tech just as it’s done with AWS, taking an in-house innovation and transforming it into a cash cow.)

Not All Voice Assistants are Created Equal

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Several tech giants are chasing voice search and assistant apps. They’re motivated by different factors—each seeing voice as a way to support, grow, and protect their unique core businesses.

Street Fight Daily: Foursquare Lands Series F, AppLift Shifts Focus from Mobile Installs to Engagement

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TODAY IN LOCAL & DIGITAL MARKETING AND MEDIA… Foursquare Picks Up $33 Million Series F Investment… Behind Applift’s Rebrand, a Shift Toward Engagement… Google’s Top Ad Exec to Leave for VC Firm…

Street Fight Daily: Zuck & Musk Take Some Heat; An ROI Calculator for Drive-to-Store Campaigns

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TODAY IN LOCAL & DIGITAL MARKETING AND MEDIA… How Serious is the New Facebook Breach?… S4M Releases Calculator to Measure ROI Generated by Drive-to-Store Campaigns… Now That We’ve Improved Media Transparency, Let’s Do the Same With Data…

Street Fight Daily: Uber Cash Burn Narrowing En Route to IPO, CallRail Engages User Base to Drive Product Dev

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TODAY IN LOCAL & DIGITAL MARKETING… Uber’s Losses Continue, But Narrow, In Its March Toward an IPO… At CallRail, Community Forums Prove Valuable for Product Development… How Yelp’s Revamped Ad Biz Powered a Great Quarter…

Hires and Openings at Blis, TruMeasure, and Adzuna

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Every two or three weeks, Street Fight rounds up some of the latest hires and new openings in the hyperlocal marketing, tech, and media industries. This week’s edition includes moves and openings at Broadly, Cedato, Magisto, SiteSwan, and New York Magazine.

Street Fight Daily: Facebook Feels the Impact of Its Scandals; GrubHub Acquires LevelUp

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TOP STORIES IN DIGITAL MARKETING… At Last, Facebook Feels the Impact of Its Errors… GrubHub Acquires Payments and Loyalty Company LevelUp for $390 Million… Top Lesson for News Sites in SF Innovation Tour: Identify Users and Win Them Over One by One…

Street Fight Daily: Attribution Remains Top Challenge for Brands, Nextdoor Partners with HouseCanary

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PARTNERSHIPS, ACQUISITION, AND PERSISTENT INDUSTRY PROBLEMS… Proving Local Attribution and ROI Remains a Top Challenge for Multi-Location Brands… Nextdoor Partners With HouseCanary, Adding Real Estate Functionality to its Social Network… Salesforce Will Acquire Data Integrator Datorama for a Reported $800M…

Street Fight Daily: AT&T and Verizon to End Sale of Location Data, DexYP Partners with SOCi

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… AT&T, Verizon to End Sale of Location Data to Third Parties… Your Ad Tech Tax Is Amazon’s Opportunity… How the EU Is Implementing Its New Privacy Rules…

#SFSNYC: May AI Help You? The Marketing Opportunities in Intelligent Search

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Artificial intelligence is the future of search engines. Increasingly conversational, intelligent, and visual, search engines are adapting to become the centerpiece of consumer engagement, as well as a virtually new tool for marketers. Purna Virji, senior manager for global engagement at Microsoft/Bing, broke down the AI revolution in search at Street Fight Summit Wednesday.