Dueling Metaverse Visions: Snap vs. Facebook Facebook parent Meta reported Q1 results [https://s21.q4cdn.com/399680738/files/doc_news/Meta-Reports-First-Quarter-2022-Results-2022.pdf] Wednesday. Because they weren't a wipeout

Twitter: The 'Cesspool' Cometh? There's a frenzy of speculation going on about Twitter's future. The right is elated; the left is dejected [https://www.

Major Tech Defeat in New EU Law In a deal reached this weekend, European policymakers approved a sweeping piece of new legislation, the Digital Services Act (DSA) [https://ec.europa.

Report: Local Pack Winners 60X More Visible SOCi released [https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/soci-analyzes-12-9-billion-data-points-to-rank-digital-marketing-performance-of-multi-location-brands-301529757.html] its fourth annual Localized Marketing Benchmarking Report this week. ( Disclosure: I helped create the

What's Wrong with Netflix? The stock market was (briefly) shocked yesterday when Netflix announced [https://ir.netflix.net/financials/quarterly-earnings/default.aspx] that rather than adding 2.5

Stores Come Roaring Back During 2020 and the phenomenal growth of e-commerce, the question arose: has consumer shopping forever changed? The answer it turns out is yes and no. According

Who Should Control Twitter? As you already know, Elon Musk – the world's richest person – made a $43 billion all-cash offer for Twitter [https://www.wsj.com/articles/can-elon-musk-buy-twitter-11649949297?

Search Dominates Digital Advertising According to the 2021 IAB Internet Advertising Revenue Report, [https://www.iab.com/news/digital-advertising-soared-35-to-189-billion-in-2021-according-to-the-iab-internet-advertising-revenue-report/] online ad revenue grew at the fastest pace since 2006, 35%

Image, Local and Product Search Convergence It seems like an acceleration is happening in search. Google has been rolling out many of its AI/ML-driven gains in visual search and

Google, Amazon Caught 'Astroturfing' Most of big tech companies use small businesses (SMBs) as a sword or a shield in advocating for or against regulations or public policies.

US Antitrust Law Closer to Passing Last week the European Parliament completed work [https://www.nearmedia.co/google-dr-booking-eu-gatekeeper-smackdown-1-fraud-claim/] on its Digital Markets Act. The legislation targets major US tech "

Streaming's Big Oscar Win Beyond "the slap" – actor Will Smith publicly smacked presenter Chris Rock on stage after Smith took umbrage at Rock's joke

Google's New 'Make a Dr. Appointment' Google's evolving mission is not simply to organize and present information but to make it actionable and drive

Take our 5-minute monetization survey. We'll love you for it. Start Survey [https://forms.gle/bEkdSQJZAnx9ESXS7] Snippets Not on Local Pack SERPs Moz has come out with a

Fresh: Amazon Taking Ads into Stores Last year we found out that Amazon's ad business is worth $31 billion [https://www.nearmedia.co/amazons-31b-ads-biz-review-theater-metas-downturn/]. For context, that'

Snap Takes Location-AR Global Snapchat is opening up AR experiences tied to places. In 2019, the company introduced Landmarkers [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNs9kdSAOCA], enabling users to tie

Amazon Now Controls Nearly 60% of E-commerce Analysts have estimated Amazon's US e-commerce share at between [https://www.emarketer.com/content/amazon-clobbers-competition-us-retail-ecommerce-sales-2021] 40% and 44% of total online

Google: 'Smaller Stores' vs. 'Nearby' I don't use Google Shopping very often. I therefore missed the addition of a "smaller stores" filter.

Instacart Launches in-Store Navigation Almost a decade ago, when Apple's iBeacon was a shiny new object, there was considerable anticipation of "search to shelf" experiences with

Suit: Google 'Deceived' Consumers with Online Ordering As part of the effort to make search more transactional, Google added an "order online" button in the GBP

Local Inventory Can Beat Amazon I've argued local inventory (online) can help divert consumers away from Amazon. But it's not inventory alone; it's inventory

Amazon Kills Bookstores for Grocery Biz Amazon's CEO Andy Jassy has made the decision [https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/exclusive-amazon-close-all-its-physical-bookstores-4-star-shops-2022-03-02/] to shutter most of the company'

Uber Hooks Up with Yelp for 'Explore' Uber launched a new feature [https://www.uber.com/newsroom/uber-explore/] in its flagship app that relies heavily on Yelp content

Ukraine: Tech in the Crossfire A major front in the war for Ukraine is online. Tech companies, especially social media, are being forced to choose sides. All the major US

Ukraine and Perpetual Cyberwar The tragedy of Russia's invasion of Ukraine is still unfolding. Roughly 50,000 people have fled the country with more to follow. Russia will

Fake Reviews: Bribing Yelp Elites, Amazon Sues We've previously written about review fraud [https://www.nearmedia.co/meh-ta-moment-fake-reviews-gmb-a-big-lead-driver/] and the platforms' inconsistent takedown efforts. Yelp is probably

Trust: Consumers' Top CX Priority Most companies think they're doing a better job of delivering positive customer experiences (CX) than they actually are, according to the new

Google Follows Apple Privacy Lead on Android Google is brining its "privacy sandbox" to Android devices and, in the process, will effectively get rid of its IDFA-like advertising

Super Bowl Ads: But Are They Worth It? Last year a 30 second Super Bowl spot cost $5.5 million. This year it was up to $6.5 million (or

Yelp: 60% of Revenue from 10% of Views Yelp reported [https://www.yelp-ir.com/] Q4 and full year 2021 revenues this week, beating analyst estimates. Growth has come despite a

Apple Taps into Pay Apple just introduced [https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2022/02/apple-unveils-contactless-payments-via-tap-to-pay-on-iphone/] a way to turn the iPhone into a point-of-sale (POS) terminal for merchants. Called Tap

Angi Hopes Walmart Delivers Cheaper Acquisition Seeking to further diversify its customer acquisition strategy, Angi (formerly Angie's List) partnered with Walmart. The deal, announced [https://ir.angi.com/

Take Our Reader Survey [https://www.nearmedia.co/please-take-our-survey/] Facebook's Q4 'Wipeout': Dip or Beginning of the End? This week Meta reported [https://investor.fb.com/

Google Delivers Another Huge Q: $75B Google once again beat analyst expectations [https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/01/alphabet-googl-q4-2021-earnings.html] (.pdf [https://abc.xyz/investor/static/pdf/2021Q4_alphabet_

Spotify: Revenue vs. 'Responsibility' Controversial podcaster Joe Rogan has almost 4x the audience [https://twitter.com/APompliano/status/1478059547688374281] of right-wing pundit and vaccine disinformation purveyor Tucker Carlson.

Yelp: Local Business Back to Normal – Almost US GDP increased at 6.9% percent in Q4, much better than expected. Yet inflation concerns have overshadowed the strong performance of the

Review Gating Is Dead Review gating is the practice of routing satisfied and dissatisfied customers down different pathways. The happy customer is asked to write a review, the grumpy customer

Is Promoting Competition the Enemy of CX? The anti-tech lawsuits [https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/24/google-sued-by-4-attorneys-general-over-location-tracking.html?] and legislation [https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/2992/text]

Amazon Style: The Future of the Store As you've heard, Amazon is opening a new retail store in LA [https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/retail/amazon-reimagines-in-store-shopping-with-amazon-style] : [Amazon] Style.

PlaceIQ Bought by PE-Backed Precisely Precisely, a company that calls itself "a global leader in data integrity software," has acquired [https://www.placeiq.com/2022/01/a-big-milestone-on-the-placeiq-journey/] the

Shopify: Omnichannel for the Win Shopify is out with another interesting (and massive) report, "The Future of Commerce in 2022 [https://www.shopify.com/research/future-of-commerce]." It'

DDG Crosses 1B Searches, Neeva Sets Pricing DuckDuckGo, which has seen meaningful growth over the past few years, said it has now exceeded 1 billion queries [https://duckduckgo.com/traffic]

Metasuit: FTC Lives to Fight Another Day When the FTC brought its antitrust suit against Facebook/Meta in June of last year, the court dismissed it [https://www.nearmedia.co/

Yes, the iPhone Is 15 Yesterday the iPhone officially had its 15th birthday. Does that make you feel old? In 2007, when it was introduced, Steve Jobs called it a

Privacy Driving DuckDuckGo and Brave Growth For the longest time it seemed like search engines and browsers built around privacy would have almost no impact, unable to wrest meaningful share

Why Google Lost the Product Search Battle For at least five years consumer surveys have repeatedly told us that Amazon dominates product search. Different surveys have different numbers: the range

Holiday Spending Grows, E-commerce 21% Despite a resurgent pandemic, US consumers still shopped a lot in the run up to Xmas. According to data [ https://www.mastercard.com/news/press/

Thank you for joining us for the first year of Near Media. Despite it being a hard year, we relished the opportunity to appear in your inbox and hope that

Google's Local Algo Update Fallout Google recently confirmed [https://twitter.com/googlesearchc/status/1471546117125029889] that it completed a local algorithm update, between November 30 and December 8. Many

Google Local Guides: More Volume, Shorter Reviews A new SOCi analysis [https://streetfightmag.com/2021/12/15/soci-study-finds-62-of-google-reviews-are-written-by-local-guides/] of nearly 170 million Google reviews across 1.1 million business locations

Bleak Milestone: 800K Dead from COVID Later this week the US will hit 50M cases and 800,000 dead from COVID, likely an undercount of the real mortality figure. The

Google's Local Pack Refresh During a previous Near Memo [https://www.nearmedia.co/squarespaces-everything-to-sell-anything-google-vs-lowe-and-has-the-local-pack-outlived-its-usefulness/] we discussed how Google's local results were in need of an upgrade.

Yelp: 'Our Review Approach Is Best' Yelp released the results of an October consumer survey [https://blog.yelp.com/news/survey-finds-what-makes-reviews-trustworthy-consumers-want-more-than-ratings/] about reviews and consumer trust. Yelp'

Will Smart Glasses Replace the iPhone? Apple has an entire building and hundreds of employees dedicated to its forthcoming mixed-reality glasses. The expectation is that the first of perhaps multiple

Xooglers Sue Google for Abandoning 'Don't Be Evil' Google removed the phrase "Don't Be Evil [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_be_

Cyber Monday Comes Up a Bit Short As with Black Friday, Cyber Monday's spending disappointed. Last year US consumers spent $10.8 billion on Cyber Monday. However this

Black Friday: Not Quite As Black Black Friday didn't quite deliver. With fewer in-store discounts, foot traffic was nearly 30% lower than 2019 [https://www.cnbc.com/2021/

Macy's: Digital Commerce Better with Stores More than a decade ago I ran into Euclid Analytics [https://searchengineland.com/euclid-offers-google-analytics-for-the-real-world-99982] ' founder Brent Franson on a flight from

Survey: 'At Least' Half of Search Is Local For years, I've been trying to get an accurate sense of what percentage of Google search volume is

Outlook: Small SMB Optimism Declines Earlier this year when the economy was on a tear, there were millions of jobs unfilled, especially among local businesses. Now the economic vigor may

Who's Buying More Online? Affluent Consumers As we head into the holiday shopping season in earnest, there's lots of speculation about the mix of online and

Amazon Alexa Is 7 Years Old On the heels of the failed Fire Phone, Amazon released the first generation Echo (feat. Alexa) in November 2014 [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/

Will You Use You.com? On the heels of Neeva [https://neeva.com/], another search engine has launched: You.com [http://you.com/]. It appeared in public beta on Tuesday

FTC's Emerging Review Fraud Strategy In October, the FTC notified major US brands [https://www.nearmedia.co/fake-reviews-crackdown-amazons-toyland-shoppers-dont-care-about-voice-search/] that "misleading use of endorsements could lead to major

GMB to GBP: So What? I know that you already saw: Google "rebranded" Google My Business as Google Business Profile [https://support.google.com/business/thread/133876833/introducing-new-updates-to-business-profile?

Amazon's Lock on E-commerce Amazon dominates [https://www.emarketer.com/content/amazon-dominates-us-ecommerce-though-its-market-share-varies-by-category] e-commerce. And it appears there's nothing on the horizon that will change that. A

Going Back into Stores Most holiday shopping surveys say a version of the same thing: consumers plan to shop online but stores remain important to their overall experience. This hybrid/

It's Meta Time or the End of Days We're late to the meta-party. I'm sure you've read 20 articles and 10x more

Q3 Impact of Apple Privacy Rules 'Modest' Snap said it was hurt [https://www.nearmedia.co/amazon-goes-bopis-isp-surveillance-apple-bites-snap/]. But Twitter reported the revenue impact was "lower than expected

AGs: Google's AMP a Scheme to Drive Revenue The second amended antitrust complaint against Google (.pdf [https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.564903/gov.uscourts.nysd.

Amazon Goes BOPIS with 'Local Selling' One of Google's strategies against Amazon is showing online and local product inventory in SERPs. Traditional retailers have sought to

Yelp: 85% of Business Locations Have Re-Opened Though the Delta variant is still here, local economies are nearly back to normal, according to Yelp's Q3 economic impact report

Privacy Rules Juice Apple Search Revenue Is it just a coincidence? According to a Financial Times analysis [https://twitter.com/PatrickMcGee_/status/1449608262492459011], since the introduction of iOS 14.5,

FTC Begins Fake Review Crackdown Earlier this week, the FTC notified [https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/blogs/business-blog/2021/10/latest-ftc-notice-penalty-offenses-tells-700-national] "more than 700 businesses [https://www.ftc.gov/

Yelp's New Services for Home Services Last month, Yelp integrated its restaurant tools into a "Guest Manager" SaaS suite [https://www.nearmedia.co/google-local-inventory-astro/]. Now it&

Some SMBs Questioning Dependance on Social Millions of small businesses (SMBs) consider social media – Facebook and Instagram in particular – their top marketing channel. But following two recent outages and a

Welcome: If Google and Instagram Got Together... There's a new local search app [https://techcrunch.com/2021/10/07/welcome-debuts-a-smarter-city-guide-app-on-ios-backed-by-3-5m-led-by-accel/] in town, called Welcome (iOS only [https://apps.

Haugen: The Algorithm Is the Evil It's only a couple of days since former Facebook PM Frances Haugen appeared on 60 Minutes [https://www.nearmedia.co/fb/]. (You&

Facebook Whistleblower: 'Profits over People' You probably saw or read about the CBS 60 Minutes "Facebook Whistleblower" segment [https://www.cbsnews.com/news/facebook-whistleblower-frances-haugen-misinformation-public-60-minutes-2021-10-03/] last night.

Marketers: Reputation Management Trumps Ads According to a new survey of multi-location marketers, "managing online reputation is now more important than advertising": 57% to 43%. The survey, which

Google's Refocused Lens and 'In-Stock' Filter Google is (re)introducing two shopping tools that have been around for awhile: Google Lens and local inventory. Google Lens

Local Restaurants on Front Lines of Vax Wars More than 180 million Americans have been fully vaccinated [https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#vaccinations_vacc-total-admin-rate-total] and more than 210 million have

Apple's Opt-In Ad Rules Hurt Facebook There are many cynics [https://www.cnbc.com/2021/09/24/apples-ios-changes-hurt-facebooks-ad-business.html] who believe Apple's opt-in tracking rules [https:

Apple Maps Has Finally Arrived After a botched original launch and years of playing catch-up to Google Maps, Apple Maps has finally become truly competitive. There are a wide range

LSAs and Lawyers: Heading for Divorce? While nobody knows how much Google is making on Local Services Ads (LSAs), they're popular and growing. LSAs were introduced for the

What's My Business: WhatsApp's 'Yellow Pages' Earlier this week we wrote about Twitter's relatively new "About Module [https://www.nearmedia.co/

Twitter's 'About Module' for Local Businesses In April Twitter launched [https://twitter.com/TwitterBusiness/status/1384968745156755458] "Professional Profiles." They offer a verified and expanded

Shopify CAC, Marketing Benchmarks for SMBs Marketers are always looking for good benchmarking data. Shopify offers some [https://www.shopify.com/blog/customer-acquisition-cost] (based on a survey) that reflect SMB

Chase Buying Zagat and The Infatuation Banking giant JPMorgan Chase said [https://finance.yahoo.com/finance/news/jpmorgan-chase-acquire-leading-restaurant-171500485.html#:~:text=NEW%20YORK%2C%20September%2009%2C%202021,recommendations%20for%20where%

News Pubs Liable for Random Facebook Comments In a defamation case that may have broad implications, the Australian High Court ruled [https://www.theguardian.com/media/2021/sep/08/high-court-rules-australian-media-companies-are-liable-for-defamatory-comments-posted-on-their-facebook-pages?

Report: Intuit to Buy Mailchimp for $10B Bloomberg reported [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-09-01/intuit-said-in-talks-to-buy-mailchimp-for-more-than-10-billion] this week that Intuit, maker of tax and accounting software, is seeking to

SMB Survey: 55% Not Buying Digital Ads A new survey [https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/366360/small-businesses-increasing-digital-ad-spend-not.html] of 800 SMBs by social content platform Ripl [https://www.ripl.

Survey: Annual 'SMB' Ad Budgets $109K Borrell Associates published its annual local advertiser survey [http://www.insideradio.com/free/borrell-survey-points-to-strengthening-ad-market-radio-in-good-position-to-benefit-from-gains/article_ce63ca88-0631-11ec-ace2-df5cc2e20782.html] . Conducted in Q2, the sample

WTF: Google Paying $15B for iPhone Default Search There have been various informed estimates over the years about how much Google is paying Apple to be the Safari browser'

GoLocal: Walmart's Last-Mile Delivery Service Walmart is doing something that would have been unthinkable in a pre-Amazon world: offering its delivery infrastructure to other retailers. Announced earlier this

Study: Most Search Queries Are 'Mid-Funnel' Marketers discuss the "purchase funnel" all the time without really knowing what it means for their actual customer's

Contrarian Move: Amazon Plans Department Stores At a time when e-commerce is driving retail growth [https://www.digitalcommerce360.com/article/quarterly-online-sales/?], Amazon is planning more physical stores. The Wall Street

'Historic Moment': Amazon Passes Walmart Walmart reported [https://corporate.walmart.com/newsroom/2021/08/17/walmart-releases-q2-fy22-earnings] quarterly earnings yesterday. The world's largest traditional retailer said that

Apple Boosting Search with iOS 15 Apple has been slowly and incrementally improving its Spotlight Search feature on the iPhone over time. With iOS 15,  there are new upgrades and

'Vaxports' Coming to an SMB Near You As the seriousness of the Delta Variant sinks in, consumers are becoming more depressed [https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/13/

Google Picking Winners and Losers in Food Delivery Google is beset by antitrust critics on all sides. In its defense Google often argues its decisions are for the benefit of

Climate Crisis: No More BAU You've probably read about [https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/09/world/ipcc-climate-key-takeaways/index.html] a massive new UN report [https://www.ipcc.

Yelp Surprise Profit, Vaccination Attributes Yelp announced [https://www.yelp-ir.com/news-releases/news-release-details/2021/Yelp-Reports-Second-Quarter-2021-Financial-Results/] a surprise Q2 profit and 52% YoY revenue growth this week. The company saw gains

Local and Organic Drive 73% of Page Views If you didn't already know, the two most effective digital channels are organic SEO and local (Google Local Pack), according

The (New) Ethics of Targeting and Tracking For 20+ years, digital marketers essentially captured as much data as they could about consumer behavior and identities, as quietly as possible – so

Snap Personalizes Map with 'My Places' It's "places week." On Wednesday Apple relaunched its Maps Connect listings portal, as Places on Maps [https://www.

Apple 'Places' Replaces Maps Connect Apple's self-service listings management portal Maps Connect, which launched in 2014 [https://searchengineland.com/apple-launches-maps-connect-self-service-local-listings-portal-206349] , is now "Places on Maps

Roofer Sues Over 1-Star Reviews, Gets Bombed File this in the "will they never learn" column. A couple renting a house in Vancouver, Washington engaged with a roofer,

Section 230 Bill Takes Aim at Facebook One of the first concrete acts of "Section 230 reform" is Senator Amy Klobuchar’s proposed Health Misinformation Act of 2021

Square Bank Should Scare Traditionals Square has expanded its banking capabilities [https://squareup.com/us/en/press/introducing-square-banking] and is now offering full-service banking for small business customers. Formally called

Olympics Race to Avoid Financial Disaster In an ominous sign for the 2021 Olympics, Toyota said it will not air TV commercials [https://apnews.com/article/sports-2020-tokyo-olympics-business-health-coronavirus-pandemic-5eb0e254b9a0cac7ad57005677eebe66] during the games.

What's Really Going on with IDFA? There's a lot of conflicting information about Apple's AppTrackingTransparency (ATT) and the number of opt-ins. According to Flurry

Craigslist Revenue Off Almost 50% Since 2018 Haven't used Craigslist lately? You aren't alone. According to a report [https://aimgroup.com/2021/02/11/craigslist-traffic-revenue-fell-radically-in-2020/] from

Biden's Sweeping Competition Order Faces Challenges On Friday President Biden signed an expansive executive order [https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2021/07/09/executive-order-on-promoting-competition-in-the-american-economy/] "promoting competition

Regulating Google Play: Would It Matter? Earlier this week Attorneys general from 36 states and Washington DC filed an antitrust suit [https://www.politico.com/news/2021/07/07/36-states-dc-sue-google-for-alleged-antitrust-violations-in-its-android-app-store-498622]

$4.3 billion: Nextdoor Finally Going Public Current CEO Sarah Friar replaced founding CEO Nirav Tolia in late 2018, roughly a decade after the company that became Nextdoor was founded

Location Intelligence Enters a Challenging New Phase Foursquare founder Dennis Crowley said he's "stepping back" from his current role [https://streetfightmag.com/2021/06/29/where-location-intelligence-stands-as-foursquare-founder-steps-back/

FTC Humiliated, Facebook Antitrust Case Dismissed Earlier today, a federal court judge dismissed [https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/28/judge-dismisses-ftc-antitrust-complaint-against-facebook.html] state and FTC antitrust lawsuits against Facebook. Like

Google Gives Cookies a Temporary Reprieve Google said [https://blog.google/products/chrome/updated-timeline-privacy-sandbox-milestones/] this week that it's going to push back the Chrome deprecation of third party

E-commerce Review Fraud a $152B Problem Nearly 90% of global e-commerce spending (eMarketer: $4.3 trillion) is influenced by reviews. That means product reviews on Amazon and other marketplaces are

Amazon Prime Day Sales May Reach $11B Last year Amazon Prime Day generated almost $10.5 billion in sales. This year should beat that, although Prime Day won't

Google Building Search to Sale Local Experiences Google is making it easier [https://blog.google/outreach-initiatives/small-business/show-what-your-business-offers/] for local business owners to input their content directly from SERPs and

Uberall Raises $115M, Buys MomentFeed Given that I work for Uberall we debated whether to cover this. But it is a big story; so here's the news [https:

Digital Boosted SMBs, Can They Keep It Up? Many small businesses pivoted during COVID to offer more digital capabilities: better websites, chatbots, online appointments, ordering and food delivery. Half of

Antitrust Bills 'Package' Takes Aim at Big Tech A bipartisan group of House lawmakers today introduced [https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/11/amazon-apple-facebook-and-google-targeted-in-bipartisan-antitrust-reform-bills.html] five separate reform

Apple Goes All Google Maps Apple made a ton of OS and feature announcements during its WWDC developer keynote [https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2021/101/] on Monday. The

Google: Newspaper Ad Losses Not Our Fault Newspaper publishers often blame Google for the decline of ad revenues. In the US, Craigslist took lots of blame early on. More recently,

Nextdoor Revamps Classifieds – Now Called 'Finds' Nextdoor announced [https://blog.nextdoor.com/2021/06/03/introducing-free-finds-a-new-experience-to-find-free-items-nearby/] a new section in its classifieds marketplace, for free items: Free Finds

To the Winners Go the Stores Even as many retailers struggle [https://www.aarp.org/money/credit-loans-debt/info-2020/bankrupt-retail-chain-store-list-is-growing.html] and pundits pronounce stores endangered, we're entering a

Google: 'Content for Data' Is Over Google held its annual Google Marketing Live event this week. There were many ads- and analytics- related announcements [https://blog.google/products/

Fake Review Economy Is Booming Google is the dominant local reviews platform [https://www.nearmedia.co/when-google-came-to-dominate-reviews/]. It also dominates the world of fake reviews. A new investigation [https://www.

Food Fight: DoorDash vs. UberEats Food delivery in the US is estimated to be worth nearly $30 billion according to estimates [https://www.statista.com/outlook/dmo/eservices/online-food-delivery/united-states#

20 Years After Apple, Google Opens a Retail Store It's 20 years since the first Apple Store opened in Tyson's Corner VA. And it's

AI Making 'Search' More Conversational AI was center stage at Google's I/O developer event. During a 2+ hour long keynote [https://www.youtube.com/watch?

Mask Confusion Hits States, Retailers Last week the CDC changed its mask guidance [https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/fully-vaccinated.html]. The agency proclaimed that fully vaccinated people didn&

The Future of (Local) Commerce Shopify's new Future of Commerce report [https://www.shopify.com/future-of-commerce/2021] builds on surveys as well as customer data. It's

Nextdoor: Preference for SMBs Growing Nextdoor released [https://business.nextdoor.com/enterprise/blog/nextdoor-insights-series-5-our-changing-spending-habits] a new report, showcasing attitudes and behaviors of its audience ("consumers 16-64 who have used

Leak Shows Massive Scale of Review Fraud The scale of the review fraud problem online is not precisely known, except that it's big. This is especially true for

IDFA: Consumers Saying "No" to Tracking According to a new report from Flurry Analytics [https://www.flurry.com/blog/ios-14-5-opt-in-rate-att-restricted-app-tracking-transparency-worldwide-us-daily-latest-update/] (Verizon Media), based on roughly 10 days of

Facebook's Trump Ban: Who Gets to Speak Online? The world's most important political debates are now happening on social media. Over the past several weeks, for

Yahoo's Death By 1000 Cuts Continues with PE Sale Verizon is selling its media and ad-tech assets, AOL and Yahoo, to Apollo Global Management for $5 billion. The

SMB Websites and Commerce Now Inseparable Mailchimp started as an email platform and moved into "marketing automation." It has now become an all-inclusive SMB SaaS platform for digital

Apple TrackingEarnings: MSFT, Shopify, Facebook, Apple & Google Beat It's a big earnings week. Microsoft and Shopify reported strong revenue growth [https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/27/

Google Poised to Disrupt the $27B Food Delivery Business Google has become a potentially disruptive player in the multi-billion dollar food delivery business. One estimate of the market's

Native Apple Maps Ratings Coming Soon to US In September 2020 [https://searchengineland.com/apple-ratings-are-coming-to-ios-14-how-disruptive-will-it-be-340068] , it became clear that Apple Maps was going to start collecting its own user photos

Zagat Relaunches with New Scoring, Emphasis on Photos The Zagat restaurant guide was first published in 1979 by Nina and Tim Zagat. After many years as a print publication, its

Most Franchise Brands Local Marketing Laggards SOCi's recently published "Localized Marketing Benchmark Report" (reg. req'd [https://www.meetsoci.com/insight/lmbr-report-2021/]) scores 275 franchise

Stim-Driven Retail Booming, Online and Off March retail sales grew by almost 10% [https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/15/us-retail-sales-march-2021.html], driven by government stimulus checks, vaccinations and increasing

FB Survey: SMBs Remain Fragile As Economy Reopens A recent report (.pdf [https://about.fb.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/US_SSMB_Full_Report.pdf]) from Facebook chronicles the challenges

MSFT Buys Speech Pioneer Nuance for $16 billion. Announced today, the Nuance acquisition [https://www.reuters.com/article/nuance-commns-ma-microsoft/update-1-microsoft-to-buy-ai-firm-nuance-communications-in-197-bln-deal-in-healthcare-push-idUSL4N2M536I] becomes Microsoft's second largest after LinkedIn ($27 billion)

Swyft Wants to 'Democratize' Same-Day Delivery Swyft has created a "B2B managed-marketplace solving for affordability in last-mile logistics." Its objective is to bring Amazon-like same-day delivery

Google: Local and Digital Now Joined at the Hip In a blog post [https://blog.google/products/ads-commerce/local-shopping-trends/] Google confirms what nearly everyone in local has known for years:

Verizon Inks Catalina Deal to Track Ad Impact In-Store Last week Verizon announced [https://www.verizonmedia.com/insights/catalina-real-time-decisioning-partnership] a partnership with Catalina [https://www.catalina.com/] to connect digital

Squarespace Buying Restaurant Startup Tock for $400M Bloomberg is reporting [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-31/squarespace-buys-restaurant-tech-startup-tock-for-400-million] that restaurant reservations and delivery startup Tock was acquired by SMB site

Vaccines Unlocking Pent-up Consumer Demand There's pent-up consumer demand for a return to normalcy. Evidence of new optimism, massive consumer savings [https://www.nearmedia.co/local-revenge-spending/] and stimulus-driven

Amazon Is to Google As Google Is to Bing Years ago, then Google CEO Eric Schmidt said Amazon was the company's biggest competitor. He wasn't wrong.

Big Tech Hearings: Likely 230 Reform but How Much? The CEOs of Google, Facebook and Twitter testified before Congress yesterday [https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/25/technology/facebook-twitter-google-capitol-riots-hearing.html]

Coming 'Revenge Spending Binge' Will Boost Local We all know the e-commerce growth story [https://www.digitalcommerce360.com/2021/02/15/ecommerce-during-coronavirus-pandemic-in-charts/] . That, combined with closures from major

Does Local Dominate 'Zero-Click' Search? According to SimilarWeb data, analyzed by Rand Fishkin [https://sparktoro.com/blog/in-2020-two-thirds-of-google-searches-ended-without-a-click/] , nearly two-thirds (65%) of Google searches "ended in the

Economy Poised for Comeback but for Whom? The US Federal Reserve is projecting [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-europe-economy-analysis/analysis-europe-must-play-catch-up-as-u-s-economy-readies-for-take-off-idUSKBN2BB14C] white-hot economic growth in 2021: 6.5%. As vaccinations roll

Survey: 73% Say Unlikely to Opt-in to IDFA Tracking As we wait for the rollout of Apple's IDFA opt-in rules, there's ongoing speculation about how consumers

Amazon Cares About the Future of Healthcare Healthcare spending in the US is nearly $4 trillion annually, more than $11,500 per person. It's an evolving market and

Near-Me Search Hits 'All Time High' in 2020, Says Google Near-Me search hit an all-time high in 2020 according to Google. That's one of several trends

People Want to Support SMBs but Buy from Amazon Amazon technically lost share as e-commerce expanded in 2020 but it was the big winner during COVID lockdowns. Despite its anti-union

The Marketing Lesson of COVID: CX A year later, there are many answers to the question, "what did we learn from COVID-19?" We could discuss policy, social or

Study: 66% of Traffic in 2020 from Mobile A new data analysis [https://www.semrush.com/blog/mobile-vs-desktop/] looks at 2020 search trends. Many desktop apologists touted the return of

Does Google Challenger Neeva Have a Chance? I was given early access to Neeva [https://neeva.co/], the new search engine created by former Google ad boss Sridhar Ramaswamy, who

IAB: Media Companies Must Offer Trust + More Value A new IAB report [https://www.iab.com/insights/iab-outlook-2021-ecosystem/] on the changing digital marketplace argues that publishers must deliver more value

Women Are Better Leaders, Only 37 CEOs in Fortune 500 If you look at the data, there's no argument: women make better leaders than men. Women consistently outperform

Google and Facebook Responsible for Paid-Content Rise Facebook and Google often discuss how ads help keep the web free. However, as a Bloomberg opinion piece points out [https://www.bloomberg.

Privacy First or Google First? No ID Draws Mixed Reactions Once third party cookies disappear, Google won't replace them with an alternative identifier. Multiple companies have been working

Survey: We Don't Care That Google Has Our Data There's a gap between how many Americans feel about the tech companies that rule their lives and

Coming Soon: The Bank of Walmart Walmart just hired [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-02-28/with-goldman-hires-mcmillon-moves-closer-to-bank-of-walmart?] two senior Goldman Sachs bankers; could “The Bank of Walmart” be far behind?

The Antitrust Stars Are Aligning The antitrust stars are apparently aligned. The US House of Representatives is confident [https://www.protocol.com/Policy/house-hearing-antitrust] it can produce bipartisan antitrust reform

Facebook Says Personalized Ads 'a Lifeline' for SMBs Facebook has complained that Apple's coming App Tracking Transparency [https://developer.apple.com/app-store/user-privacy-and-data-use/] privacy rules will

Yelp: SaaS Tool Provider for Restaurants Google is badly beating Yelp. It's the top reviews destination by far and has much more review volume across categories. Yelp is

Shiny New Object: Augmented Reality Glasses Global smartphone sales [https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2021-02-22-4q20-smartphone-market-share-release] were down 12.5% in 2020. Apple was the top smartphone maker in

E-commerce in 2020 Was 14% (or 20%) of US Retail US e-commerce in 2020 was nearly [https://www.marketplacepulse.com/articles/us-e-commerce-sales-nearly-800-billion-in-2020] $800 billion, compared with about $600 billion in

Ghost Kitchens: The Future of Restaurants? There may already be as many as 100,000 cloud or ghost kitchens [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-11-18/what-are-virtual-restaurants-chili-s-and-applebee-s-add-wings-brands] in the US.

Angry Facebook Bans News in Australia Google and Facebook have been resisting Australia's News Media Bargaining Code (.pdf [https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/download/legislation/ems/r6652_

Amazon Buys Shopify Competitor Selz Selz is an Australia-based e-commerce platform for SMBs. It was acquired by Amazon [https://founderu.selz.com/selz-update/] in mid-January. Specific deal terms weren'

Google Testing 'Find Results' on Yelp in Local SERP Early last year Google implemented [https://searchengineland.com/new-local-serp-live-in-europe-329553] a new local SERP in Europe, featuring a carousel that

[https://nearmedia.co/memo] Facebook's Smartwatch Is Probably DOA Last week The Information first reported [https://www.theinformation.com/articles/facebook-plans-smartwatch-with-focus-on-messaging-health] that Facebook was working on an Apple

Poll Finds Digital Ad Burnout from Screen Overload Are people paying less attention to digital advertising? A new survey [https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/consumer-research-shows-heightened-receptivity-to-out-of-home-messaging-especially-in-big-urban-areas-301226044.html] from Harris for OAAA,

Private Equity to Spin Out Constant Contact Web hosting holding company Endurance International Group acquired Constant Contact in 2015 for roughly $1 billion. The latter was supposed to add new

Survey: Majority Will Say No to Facebook Ad Tracking Facebook has begun testing a prompt [https://www.nearmedia.co/foot-traffic-outlook-facebook-counters-apple-prompt-big-tech-promote-bobs/] asking users to embrace ad tracking ahead of Apple'

Facebook Moderates Ahead of Section 230 Changes Facebook announced [https://about.fb.com/news/2020/04/covid-19-misinfo-update/#removing-more-false-claims] yesterday it's getting deeper into content moderation by taking down

The Super Bowl Was Boring, So Were Most of the Ads Defying predictions of close game, the Super Bowl was essentially over early in the first half. Unless you'

Every Super Bowl We Ask: 'Is It Still Worth It?' The Super Bowl is Sunday. You know that. And while some high-profile advertisers such as Coke, Ford and

Walmart Buys Dynamic Creative Platform Thunder Walmart is buying PaperG/Thunder [https://www.wsj.com/articles/walmart-buys-ad-tech-to-chase-small-business-advertisers-11612438200?] and its dynamic display ad platform, in part to lure more SMB advertisers.

Report: Store Foot Traffic to Remain Down Post-Vaccine Businesses ravaged by COVID-19 hope widespread vaccination will trigger a return to pre-pandemic consumer behavior. But survey data [https://www.firstinsight.com/

Apple Confirms ‘IFDA Deprecation’ Will Go Live in Early Spring On Thursday, Data Privacy Data, Apple confirmed that its App Tracking Transparency requirement, which was originally supposed to go into

W [https://www.theguardian.com/media/2021/jan/22/google-threatens-to-shut-down-search-in-australia-if-digital-news-code-goes-ahead] [https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/21/google-agrees-to-pay-french-publishers-for-news.html] hat the FLoC? Google says its cookie alternative is working The