Marketing Biz: Data Everywhere, Micro-Video Wars & The Rise And Fall And Rise Of Local

This week in marketing was largely about three major themes: the ubiquity of data, micro video and the struggle but importance of local. Of course, we’re all waiting to see if/when Facebook purchases Atlas and the buzzword merry-go-round continued with the emergence of “omni-channel” marketing.

This is … Marketing Biz.

DataSift Query Builder Powers the Next Generation of Social Business

With its embedded Query Builder, DataSift is powering the next wave of Social with an intuitive yet powerful, tool that enables business users to filter, find, and glean insight from social data across every facet of the business and customer experience.

Capturing and storing big data is no longer a real issue for most. The problem now is how to use it and make it available to stakeholders in a timely manner. Soon, marketers will have substantially more information at their fingertips.

Apigee Redefines Big Data Analytics in the App Economy

Apigee Insights is a highly distributed platform that stitches together data from a customer’s API programs with data from internal systems and online data sources. It delivers in-depth analysis and performance with a multi-channel data aggregator, distributed processing engine, intelligent data storage, analytic accelerators and expert services. Apigee Insights is flexible enough to deal with the changing number, volume, size and sources of app economy data, and it enables customers to get near real-time feedback loop to test, experiment and rollout changes immediately. It allows enterprises to gain insights through the entire app value chain or to focus specifically on the context of the app user, the app developer, or on information analytics.

Despite the adjective mania, this is another interesting big data analysis play with a focus on apps. In particular, marketers should be very interested in analyzing and combining the interactions taking place in third-party apps.

Shortwave Aims To Spur Video Conversations By Launching A Reddit-Style iPhone App

“Imagine if Reddit had video responses only” — there’s a section in the app where you can start a conversation around any topic, users can respond, and other users then vote to either “float” or “sink” each video, with the most popular videos rising to the top.

Video conversations or replies seem like a good idea but it’s never really caught on (see Seesmic). I’m still not sure that this is going to work because there’s simply too much attention necessary to engage. What do you think?

Vimeo acquires GIF-making app Echograph to challenge Vine & Cinemagram

Echograph is an app that creates a GIF by first taking five seconds of video and then using your finger to animate which parts of that video you want to move. Essentially, it creates a photograph with a little bit of video in it. The app used to cost $2.99, but now it will be free.

The one place where I think video is gaining traction is in the micro-video or pseudo-video market. Whether it’s Vine or Cineagram, these short bursts of media are interesting without having to invest too much time or effort. Marketers should be rushing to this new and creative medium.

Facebook Lays Groundwork For Ad Network Off The Social Site

The acquisition, expected to be less than $100 million, is the surest sign yet that Facebook has designs on becoming an even bigger player in advertising. Facebook is methodically laying the groundwork for an off-Facebook ad network powered by social data, but its plans for Atlas go beyond that.

Essentially, Facebook is looking to rival Google by building out its own “ad stack,” or the array of digital-advertising technologies that can power ads from end to end.

Facebook has been doing so much on the ad front lately – from Facebook Exchange to Lookalike Audiences. So, pull the trigger already, and let’s see how this all shakes out.

With New Alike Mobile App Acquisition, Yahoo Pushes Into Local Discovery

Alike, a mobile app that helps users discover nearby venues and places to visit based on their interests, was acquired by Yahoo on Tuesday. The app is focused on an area in which many companies are dabbling right now: Mobile-based location discovery.

Marissa Mayer made it clear that local and mobile were going to be a focus for (the new) Yahoo! The question is whether the hulking inertia of the property can be rehabilitated fast enough as other more nimble rivals pounce on the market.

Nextdoor Closes $21.6 Million In New Series B Funding To Take Its Neighborhood-Focused Social Network Global

Nextdoor, which first launched back in October 2011 and verifies the home addresses of all of its members to ensure privacy and security, now purports to have private social networking groups created for more than 8,075 neighborhoods from all 50 U.S. states, with daily message counts of more than 500,000.

I’ve always thought there’s a future in hyper-local but the demise of EveryBlock and Yardsellr and the struggles (and likely closure) of AOL’s Patch seem to show the difficulty in making it work. But if Nextdoor can make it work, they’ll have a rich ad-targeting platform.

Backed by $3 million, Nomi seeks to bridge online and offline retail with omni-channel platform

The company says it is the first tech startup to address “omni-channel” marketing, which is a new buzzword that basically means “online plus offline.” Omni-channel marketing seeks to tear down the silos between the two, integrating data from inventory, point of sale systems, marketing, and customer service departments together. “Retailers are realizing that no single customer is online only or in-store only — it’s usually a mix of the two,” Barrow says.

While I think the ‘omni-channel’ buzzword is ridiculous, Nomi does address a real problem with many established retailers. Too many run their online properties in a silo. In fact, many times they’re still the red-headed step child of the company, even though they probably contribute far more to traditional retail sales than most understand. That’s where Nomi could really be important, giving digital retailers more credit and, ultimately, resources.

And Then …

EPiServer and Silverpop Join Forces to Connect Multiple Touchpoints, Improve Time to Conversion

OnRamp, A Free, Open Source Ad Server From OpenX, Gets Shut Down After Getting Besieged By Hackers

Ontology Launches Solutions for Financial Services Industry

Everything We Know About The Ad Plan That’s ‘Plastered Over Every Single Whiteboard In Twitter HQ’

Squarespace Adds Commerce System For A High-Class Blogging/Sales Experience