Amidst all the AI excitement, one reality check we continue to raise is how the technology is held back by trust issues. Yes, AI is effective and impressive… but that doesn’t mean much if users don’t trust it en masse. These AI trust issues were quantified this week by a new study from Yelp.
TikTok’s footprint just got bigger. The company has formed a partnership with marketing automation and CRM platform HubSpot, which puts TikTok marketing tools directly in front of marketers. This should help TikTok as a customer acquisition channel, while helping HubSpot expand its functionality.
As a sell-side advertising company, Magnite is in prime position to facilitate TV advertising. Then, last fall, it closed the loop on end-to-end video production and campaign activation by acquiring Streamer.ai.
Back in January, Yelp acquired Hatch for $300 million. One thing that jumped out was the pre-money valuation and purchase price. Given Hatch’s $25 million ARR, the purchase price reflected a 12x ARR multiple. This begged the question: Are Covid-era software multiples back? The answer is yes and no.
OpenAI is just a few months into its ad monetization program and still in early stages of feeling out the right models. This has naturally led to some backlash, or at least distaste from some brand advertisers. Though these growing pains are being felt, it’s likely that OpenAI will figure it out.
Like many platforms do when they get to a certain stage of usage and engagement, Ring has opened up the opportunity for apps to be developed – via public SDK – to reach all those users.
As AI takes over the world, there’s creeping recognition that it’s not a silver bullet. It excels in some areas of automating life and work, but not others. For Hiper Co-founder and president Melissa Telsrow, much of this boils down to a question of where human work carries an irreplaceable essence.
In the past few months, we’ve tracked a handful of local marketplaces apps that have established their presence on ChatGPT, including transactional functionality. That list so far includes Angi, booking.com, doordash, Expedia, Uber and Zillow.
To show rather than tell, we’ve tracked recent product launches and integrations meant to empower SMBs to do more with less – the holy grail for local businesses. These AI integrations span operational functions but have a few common threads, such as agentic task completion and automation.
Google’s latest fusion of AI – Search Live – is now available publicly and globally. For those unfamiliar, this is Google’s multimodal-AI play that lets users combine visual, conversational text, and voice to prompt Gemini.
In this edition of Localogy’s Local Radar, we look at recently-funded startups Fuse, Sequen, and Atomic… plus a check-in with perennial Local Radar favorite, Harvey.
Wordpress.com this week became the latest player to add prompt-driven website creation and development. Meant to simplify website building to a conversational UX, it will let users speak commands to direct the automatic (excuse the pun) creation of WordPress staples like pages and posts.
Following speculation that emerged last fall, Apple has officially announced that it will start serving ads in Apple Maps. Ads will be shown alongside mapping search results, using a combination of location and contextual targeting.
SMB marketing and SaaS powerhouse Thryv (Nasdaq: THRY) today announced a new function that automates marketing workflows. Known as AI Lead Flow, it unifies marketing and sales automation features into one comprehensive tool that frees up SMBs to spend time on higher-value tasks.
We’ve always thought there should be a Fortune 500 for local media, advertising, and commerce. That could apply to the sell-side players (networks, apps & tech vendors), or the buy side (brands and SMBs that advertise and operate in local markets). SOCi has accomplished the latter with the SOCi100.
Vendasta this week launched its latest AI employee, a CRM agent. Joining its AI employees that handle reception, inbound leads, and marketing tasks, the new agent is purpose-built to offload the always-onerous tasks of recording and gaining insights from customer and prospect interactions.
Google Maps just got smarter. The company announced that Maps will get a new Gemini-powered ‘Ask Maps’ feature that makes the UX more conversational. This is just the latest in a sequence of updates that bring more AI to Google Maps, and the latest development in the ongoing mapping wars.
Reputation management continues to gain importance as a marketing function for companies of all sizes. This includes everything from review monitoring to customer interaction to boost brand sentiment. Alchemer is an emerging player in this space, which was recently validated in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant.
Base44 this week launched a set of AI agents that work proactively across a range of job functions for businesses. Known as Superagents, this latest offering from the Wix-owned Base44 joins a growing trend around AI agents that are tuned to specific job functions for autonomous productivity.
AI apps – or regular apps that integrate AI – seem to be a road map priority for most players in tech & media spheres. But are they chasing buzz rather than substance? Is AI a value add? Of course, the answer depends on the app but in the aggregate, AI can increase churn according to a new study.
