Yelp today announced a big update to its restaurant management & marketing tool, Yelp Host. This includes more than a dozen new updates, including an integration with OpenTable, a native food ordering/pickup function, and a suite of personalization and management features.
SMB SaaS leader Thryv has announced a collaboration with Breesy AI that’s meant to empower franchise-based local businesses with better decision-making intelligence. Together, the integration goes beyond intelligence, bringing local businesses the ability to take revenue-boosting action.
Google this week announced the next logical evolution for AI Mode: the ability to link to and interact with users’ apps. This is meant to extend AI Mode’s functionality beyond answering questions to completing tasks across users’ frequent apps. In other words, it brings AI mode from answers to agent.
The latest development in OpenAI’s advertising saga has emerged. eMarketer reports that it’s pacing well below ad revenue projections. Specifically, the OpenAI is reportedly 90 percent off its mark, as it experiences growing pains in bringing sponsored answers & content to ChatGPT.
One of the biggest news items in the world of local media & marketing is Apple’s rollout of ads for the first time in Apple Maps. As we examined last week, this monetizes high-intent local searches from billions of Apple Maps users. But there’s a catch… home services ads are banned from the program.
This edition of Local Radar highlights three startups betting that AI can reinvent some of the most entrenched categories in software and local commerce. From Auger rethinking and democratizing supply chain management, to Fika Jobs reshaping the way employees are hired, to Self Inspection streamlining vehicle inspections, the common thread is software designed for an AI-native world rather than retrofitted for one.
After lots of waiting, Siri AI is finally here. That is… it’s here in open beta. With iOS 27’s beta, available for the first time this week, Siri AI can finally see the light of day. This will likely be downloaded by a handful of early adopters and AI enthusiasts, but it’s also time to anticipate the wider release.
Customer experience (CX) has always been a ripe area of data collection and analysis. It helps businesses get a health check on their customers (or potential customers) to help steer their product road maps or get smarter about what to do next. These are the insights that Alchemer synthesizes.
With the May launch of iOS 26.5, ads are gradually showing up in Apple Maps. This is the first time the 13-year-old Apple Maps has
Sell-side advertising platform Magnite has announced a new coordination layer that lets advertisers create, buy, and manage ad campaigns in automated and agentic ways. Known as Orchestration, it builds agentic AI capabilities on top of Magnite’s premium inventory and sell-side intelligence.
After IPO pops from Tesla, Bending Spoons, and others – not to mention highly-anticipated AI-giant IPOs on the horizon – you could say that the IPO window has been swung open. And the latest company to file to go public is a multi-location brand that’s a bit outside of the tech world: Jersey Mike’s.
Amazon has fired the latest shot in the CTV wars, while advancing its sleeping-giant position in the field. This latest series of moves includes an analytics tool for attributing lower-funnel shopping outcomes to CTV ad campaigns; and a collaboration with iHeart to resell Amazon’s streaming inventory.
In this edition of Localogy’s Local Radar, we examine newly funded startups Doss, Legora & Zest
ChatGPT is like Netflix. It enjoyed an early mover advantage that gave it a natural market-share lead for a considerable period. But now, new blood is drawn to the market that it validated, and the room is suddenly a lot more crowded. And this phenomenon can be seen in AI’s shifting market shares.
As agentic AI permeates our digital domains and desktops, it could require a shift in the way that we interact with software. Connectors between AI engines like Claude Cowork and the various platforms that they unify and automate could mean that logging in as a SaaS subscriber is a thing of the past.
After two years of delayed action and lots of flak from the tech press, Apple recently made good on its AI promises. As we examined in our WWDC coverage last month, the company has finally rolled out the new AI-infused Siri, as well as an Apple Intelligence layer that stretches across its devices and apps.
Meta has come out with its own version of Google’s AI Mode, which it calls…. AI Mode. Carrying on a long tradition of copying features from other tech players – and not bothering to even change the name (e.g., Instagram Stories) – AI Mode will let Facebook users ask natural language questions.
As social feeds continue to gain importance in the local business media mix, how should they think about vertical video? A new report from Tiger Pistol tackles this question. Entitled 2026 Ultimate Vertical Video Playbook, the thought-leadership resource is the latest in Tiger Pistol’s ongoing playbook series.
Location intelligence leader INMarket has launched what it is calling the first agentic media optimization platform. Known as Maestrø Its built to close the accountability gap that comes with AI-driven media buying. It does this by connecting such campaigns to real-world consumer actions.
SMB-focused digital marketing platform Scorpion has announced the acquisition of search marketing agency 1SEO. With 17 years of experience in digital marketing, and a strong reputation to go along with it, the acquiree strengthens Scorpion’s ability to deliver effective SEO to SMBs, among other things.
