As Voice Gets Established, Brands Grapple with Implementation

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Consumer demand for voice technology has never been greater, and industry heavyweights like Google and Amazon are gearing up for a platform war as they work to integrate voice assistants into virtually every area of the connected consumer’s life. But behind the scenes, many brand marketers are struggling to connect the dots and design campaigns around a technology they don’t fully understand.

Building the Location Layer: A Conversation with Foursquare

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Last week, location technology company Foursquare announced its new Pinpoint audience segments product. Building from its large corpus of data on places, spatial movements and behavioral patterns, Pinpoint represents the latest in Foursquare’s evolution as the “location layer,” for the internet. We got the chance to sit down with Foursquare CEO Jeff Glueck in San Francisco to find out more. Here is the full interview. 

Omnichannel Optimization: What’s Changing (and What Isn’t) in Post-Screen Search

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For brand marketers, addressing the expansion of local search into voice and visual contexts is really a matter of digging in and getting more involved with rich local context that appears to grow more expansive by the day. Google alone has introduced a vast array of opportunities for business to differentiate themselves from the competition, including photos, videos, 360° virtual tours, business descriptions, menus, Posts, reviews, and several other features.

Google and Amazon Escalate Voice ‘Platform Wars’

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Mike Boland: Any entity competing for local commerce—publishers, brands, ad-tech players—has a looming platform choice for voice. Like the platform wars between iOS and Android, it’s a matter of deciding where to apply finite resources and development muscle. Maybe the answer is “both” Google and Amazon. But for now, Google appears to have the lead.

Voice Search Readiness in 2019 and Beyond

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Bernadette Coleman: 2019 is here. While the focus in recent weeks has been predictions on the digital marketing trends that are expected to emerge this year, I would argue that one of the most important measures brands need to take in 2019 is to implement a full-scale voice search readiness strategy, if they have not already.

Forget the Alexa-Powered Toilet. The Big Local News at CES is the Amazon Echo Auto

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While it may be the Alexa-powered toilet dominating water-cooler conversation this week, the real device to look out for is Amazon’s Echo Auto, an Alexa-powered, voice-activated product that will provide all the utility of Alexa, and connections to other voice-activated devices, from the dashboard of buyers’ cars. The device, which can be requested for just $25 and is available to a limited number of consumers now, has already been requested a whopping one million times—and counting.

How 5 Brands Leverage Voice Search Technology

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Twenty percent of mobile searches now are voice-initiated, with voice technology users most likely to ask about business addresses, directions, and hours, followed by whether stores carry specific items. Let’s look at how five of these brands are taking advantage of voice search, and what other industry players could be learning from their approaches.

LBMA Podcast: Alexa’s Location Alerts, Starbucks and Uber

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On this week’s edition of the Location-Based Marketing Association podcast: CS Hudson, Baidu Maps, XYO Protocol’s blockchain lab, Ariana Grande + YouTube, Alexa’s location alerts, Starbucks + Uber.

Voice’s Impact on Local: The Knowledge Graph, SEO, Paid Search

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We know voice will play a major role in Local in 2019, as voice recognition software gets more sophisticated, “near me” searches skyrocket, and marketers wise up to where the voice-local opportunity really lies in the near future: smartphones. In this article, let’s get more specific. Voice will affect the fundamentals of local search: the Knowledge Graph, SEO, and paid search, for example. Drawing from Street Fight lead analyst Mike Boland’s 2018 white paper on voice, I break down those changes below.

Voice’s Local Impact in 2018 and 2019

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Street Fight’s Mike Boland explained in a white paper on voice this year that there’s a number of misconceptions regarding how the medium will play out in local search and commerce, and there’s plenty of research out there to illuminate where voice is really headed. I outline some key insights about voice as brands and SMBs alike make plans to tackle it in the months to come.

Google’s Backdoor Shift to a Social Network

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Mike Blumenthal and David Mihm: In the case of Q&A, reviews, and the coming sports commenting feature, Google is looking to gain a better understanding of the entity, and in the case of the sharing buttons and the new ability to follow a business, Google is looking to better understand the individual so that it can improve the search experience now and in the future. That would be a very Googly social network.

5 Hot Retail Strategies in Play This Thanksgiving Weekend

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Top retailers aren’t leaving anything up to chance. In one of the biggest pushes we’ve seen in years, retailers around the country are embracing interactive technology and social channels in a play to capture a greater share of consumer holiday spending. Read on to learn about five innovative strategies.

The Future of Advertising in an Autonomous Vehicle Landscape

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When autonomous vehicles begin to replace traditional cars, the local business advertising market will shift alongside. But SMB advertising might not actually look dramatically different than it does today; instead, today’s location-based, personalized marketing will reach new customizable extremes.

Street Fight Daily: The Latest in On-SERP Search from Google, Visual Search on Edge of Breakthrough

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TODAY IN LOCAL & DIGITAL MARKETING AND MEDIA… Google and the On-SERP Experience: We’re Just Gettin’ Warmed Up… Retailers Must Prepare for Visual Search, On Edge of a Breakthrough… What Will Advertising on Voice Look/Sound Like?…

Street Fight Daily: Mobile to Surpass Traditional Media Combined; Brands: Be Wise About AI Use for Customer Engagement

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TODAY IN LOCAL & DIGITAL MARKETING AND MEDIA… Mobile Ad Spending to Surpass All Traditional Media Combined by 2020… Despite AI Advances, Consumers Crave Human Interactions… Google Assistant, Search Add Best Buy and Nike as Shopping Partners…

Street Fight Daily: Square CFO to Lead Nextdoor, Breaking Down the Voice Ecosystem

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TODAY IN LOCAL & DIGITAL MARKETING AND MEDIA… Not All Voice Assistants are Created Equal… Square CFO Sarah Friar to Become Nextdoor CEO… Why Facebook Is Putting Its Skin in Local News’ Subscription Efforts…

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.

Synup Test Measures Voice Search Readiness for Brands

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Voice is the future of online search, but not enough businesses are prepared for the transition. To that end, the local SEO firm Synup recently released a product it’s calling the Voice Readiness Test to help brands discover how their search results sound to consumers using popular hands-free systems such as Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant.

Street Fight Daily: A Test for Voice Search Readiness, Putting the Video Ad Boom into Numbers

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TODAY IN LOCAL & DIGITAL MARKETING AND MEDIA… Synup Test Measures Voice Search Readiness for Brands… Video Swells to 25% of Digital US Ad Spend… TripAdvisor Debuts API with MomentFeed Partnership, Helping Brands Reach Hungry Travelers…

Dstillery and CultureWaves Partner on Observed Behavior-Based Marketing

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CultureWaves has partnered with Dstillery to launch VOICE, a product that offers behavior-based segmentation for marketers. The new tool will allow marketers to overlay behavioral analysis on mobile device data in order to dig into the reasons for customer behavior.