What’s the State of Online Reviews in 2025?
Online reviews continue to be one of the tentpoles of localized marketing and search. They’re also the bain of many SMBs’ existence – a necessary
Mike Boland
April 11, 2025
Mike Boland
Mike Boland, senior analyst with Localogy, was one of Silicon Valley’s first tech reporters of the internet age as a staff reporter for Forbes magazine starting in 2000. His comments have appeared in The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times.
Good, Bad & Ugly: The State of Venture Funding in 2025
What market signals can quantify the state of venture funding? To answer that question, we turned to our go-to thought leader for all things investing & finance, Circumference Group’s Luca Sechi.
Mike Boland
April 10, 2025
What Are the Top Local Brands in America?
Though the long tail of local mostly consists of small businesses, there are several national brands in the mix. One advantage that these entities often
Mike Boland
April 9, 2025
Tiger Pistol’s Latest Playbook Addresses Revenue Growth for Marketing Resellers.
Marketing resellers are a key piece of the local media & advertising value chain. They help ad tech players scale by bringing their products to
Mike Boland
April 8, 2025
Lowes Leads Chatmeter’s Retail Reputation Report
Chatmeter has released its Retail Reputation report, which scores retailers using its first-party data. Among the findings, Lowe’s took the top spot, along with standouts like Home Depot and Costco. One success factor according to Chatmeter is cross-location consistency in employee training.
Mike Boland
April 1, 2025
L25 – What’s the Amazon Local Play in the Premium Streaming Era?
People often think of Amazon’s growth in advertising in a search or display sense on Amazon.com. But what about its endeavors into streaming? We heard
Mike Boland
March 31, 2025
Exit Velocity: A Conversation with Mark Kabana
Last month, Yext acquired local search benchmarking and intelligence leader Places Scout. What were the drivers for the acquisition and how are the combined forces
Mike Boland
March 28, 2025
L25 – AI and SMBs: The Reality Check
Do SMBs really want AI tools to help them run their businesses? We found out using original data from Localogy and Duda, and presented it during a session at L25.
Mike Boland
March 27, 2025
vcita Balances Agentic-AI Automation & Control
SMB Saas innovator vcita this week launched a new agentic AI function. Housed in its flagship BizAI software for SMB marketing, it offers an additional layer of automation for agent-like features such as responding to customers, booking appointments, and generating estimates or job quotes.
Mike Boland
March 20, 2025
Automating SMB Video: A Conversation with Creatify, Part II
Creatify tackles the perennial challenge of automating video marketing for time-starved and tech-challenged SMBs.
Mike Boland
March 19, 2025
Snapchat Gets More Location Aware
Snapchat lenses can now interact with GPS and GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite Systems). They can also ingest location-based signals such as compass headings and custom locations, which flow from Snap’s places database.
Mike Boland
March 18, 2025
Automating SMB Video: A Conversation with Creatify
Creatify tackles the perennial challenge of automating video marketing for time-starved and tech-challenged SMBs.
Mike Boland
March 14, 2025
Precisely Expands its Location-Intelligence Reach
Data analytics player Precisely has launched its software on the Snowflake Marketplace, making it more accessible to marketers and operators throughout the land.
Mike Boland
March 13, 2025
Tiger Pistol Offers Tactical Advice for Local Marketing Resellers
Following a rapid-fire release schedule for its series of tactical playbooks, Tiger Pistol is out this week with the latest edition. Entitled Scaling SMB Advertising: A Marketing Reseller’s Guide to Efficiency, Profitability, and Growth, it focuses on nuances in the art of reselling local advertising programs.
Mike Boland
March 12, 2025
Read.AI Gets More Interactive & Actionable
Read.AI today announced Search Copilot, an AI-powered engine that retrieves and synthesizes insights from workplace communications. The idea is to have a cross-platform intelligence engine to organize communications across meetings, emails, chats, cloud storage, and CRM systems.
Mike Boland
March 11, 2025
Google’s ‘AI Mode’ Turns Searches into Conversations
Another day, another Google announcement for AI search. Following our coverage yesterday about gen-AI-infused product search, Google has rolled out ‘AI Mode.’ This brings searches from isolated one-off endeavors to a more continuous and progressive string of questions. In other words, a conversation.
Mike Boland
March 7, 2025
Google Brings Generative AI to Shopping
When looking at all the places where Google continues to blitz AI, we can add shopping to the list. Users can now enter gen AI-style
Mike Boland
March 6, 2025
Tiger Pistol Builds Bridges Between Franchisors & Franchisees
Tiger Pistol has released its latest playbook, this one focused on franchise marketers. Entitled Building Bridges: How Localized Advertising Creates Trust and Drives Franchise Success, it comes just one week after its last playbook release.
Mike Boland
March 5, 2025
Yext Launches Scout, An AI Search & Competitive Intelligence Agent
Yext has launched its latest product: Scout. The AI search and competitive intelligence agent is designed to help multi-location brands navigate and operate within a quickly-changing search environment. This includes a fragmented mix of places to get found online.
Mike Boland
March 4, 2025
Thryv Q4 Earnings Propelled by SaaS Growth
Thryv Holdings, which operates SMB marketing software platform Thryv, reported Q4 earnings this week with strong growth for its SaaS business. Highlights include 41 percent year-over-year revenue growth in the SaaS portions of its business in Q4; and 30 percent year-over-year growth for FY 2024.
Mike Boland
February 28, 2025