StreetFight Magazine

For most multi-location brands, and the agencies that manage their local SEO, Apple Maps has historically lived somewhere near the bottom of the priority list. It’s the platform you claim your listing on, fill in with basic information, and occasionally revisit if something needs fixing. Google Maps listings get the comprehensive audits, the dedicated review response workflows, and the regular rank tracking and reporting, while Apple Maps largely gets checked off a list and forgotten.

Home services marketing has traditionally been built around capturing consumers when a local need turns into a search. Scorpion brought together OpenAI, TikTok, ServiceTitan and others to reflect on how that acquisition model is expanding as AI discovery, short-form video and operational data reshape the path from awareness to booked job. For home services brands, search has long occupied a privileged position in the customer journey. A homeowner needs an HVAC repair, plumber or pest-control

Digital out-of-home advertising has traditionally benefited from proximity. Put an ad near a restaurant, retailer or dealership and the physical location itself becomes part of the media strategy. Programmatic DOOH is making that relationship more precise. New research from Vistar Media, Omnicom Media and Annalect finds that something as simple as telling consumers where to find the nearest location can meaningfully increase their intent to visit or buy. The study tested store-locator informa

Restaurant chains are increasingly looking beyond burgers, sandwiches and value meals to create new reasons for customers to visit. Specialty beverages have emerged as one of the industry’s most active battlegrounds, and Sonic Drive-In believes its long history of drink customization gives it an advantage. The trend extends well beyond another seasonal menu cycle. The U.S. nonalcoholic foodservice beverage market generated $264.1 billion in 2025, representing approximately 23% of industry rev

Programmatic DOOH (digital out-of-home) has spent years promising to make physical media easier to buy like digital advertising. New global data suggests that transition is well underway, but also shows how far DOOH still has to go before it becomes a routine component of the digital media plan. The World Out of Home Organization’s inaugural Global pDOOH Expenditure Study puts worldwide programmatic DOOH spending at $1.339 billion in 2025, representing 7% of total DOOH spending. The stu

Lowe’s has made an organizational change that says more about the future of multi-location marketing than a typical executive promotion. The home-improvement retailer has expanded CMO Jen Wilson’s role to include Lowes.com and its third-party marketplace. Wilson, now executive vice president and chief marketing and digital commerce officer, already oversaw marketing, loyalty, personalization and Lowe’s retail media business. Putting those functions under one executive reflects how little sepa

Agentic commerce, or the process of AI agents helping users research, compare, and, increasingly, complete local purchases, has moved from concept to reality. For a single-location business, getting ready for this means cleaning up one website, one set of listings, one menu, one booking system, to make sure their customer journey works equally well for real people and autonomous agents. For multi-location brands, such as hotel groups, restaurant chains, and ticketed venues like movie theaters

For years, the direction of store and restaurant technology seemed clear: move more transactions into apps, kiosks and self-checkout, and ask employees to do less of the routine work. That investment has made many visits faster. It has also made the human service interactions that remain more consequential. Aritzia, Macy’s and McDonald’s are approaching that challenge from different directions. One has made personal styling part of its identity; another is investing in associates at a selecte

By every headline number, franchising is having a fine year. The International Franchise Association projects industry output will top $920 billion in 2026, with franchise GDP climbing 1.8% and nearly 13,000 new units opening. On a boardroom slide, that’s a growth story. Walk the sidewalk in front of any given location, and the story looks different. Fast food traffic fell 4.4% year-over-year in May 2026, according to Placer.ai data reported by Restaurant Dive. Quick visits, the under-1

Yelp and Hatch are among the first platforms integrating OpenAI’s GPT-Live-1, giving restaurant and service-business callers more natural conversations with AI. The resulting voice AI is connecting conversational models with the location data, business rules and operating systems required to turn a call into a booking. Voice AI is getting better at sounding human. OpenAI’s new GPT-Live-1 can listen and respond simultaneously, accommodate interruptions and background conversations,

Ace Hardware is expanding its retail media network around weather, store proximity, customer intent, and local inventory. Ace’s approach is showing how physical context can give retailers an advantage that audience targeting alone cannot. Retail media networks have generally been built around first-party customer data and proximity to a transaction. Ace Hardware is adding the conditions surrounding each purchase. Through its RedVest Media network, Ace is introducing weather-triggered

Ad fraud isn’t new to anyone running acquisition budgets across dozens or hundreds of locations. Multi-location marketers and agencies have dealt with click farms, bot traffic, and inflated app installs for years. What’s changing is the machinery behind the fraud. AI-driven ad fraud can now manufacture outcomes that mimic campaign success at a scale and level of sophistication that once would have taken a manually operated fraud operation years to build.Branch recently surveyed 455 marketing and

Lululemon plans to increase marketing as sales weaken across stores and ecommerce. Its challenge is determining which parts of the customer journey need fixing before applying the same response across an 825-location network. Lululemon plans to increase its marketing investment as it attempts to reverse declining sales and weakening brand sentiment. But before spending more to attract customers, the company must determine why they are visiting and purchasing less often. The athletic-appare

AI visibility is creating a new scale problem for multi-location brands: individual locations need to remain accurate, active and relevant across more digital surfaces than ever. Yext’s latest expansion reflects a broader shift from monitoring AI discovery to actively managing it. Knowing whether a brand appears in ChatGPT, Gemini or other AI-driven discovery experiences is quickly becoming table stakes. The harder question for enterprise marketers is what to do when it doesn’t, p

World Cup-fueled revenue surge is highlighting how OOH has evolved beyond broad awareness. Digital inventory, localized activation and improved measurement are making the channel more flexible, relevant and accountable. Out-of-home advertising entered the summer with strong momentum as major events, digital-first advertisers and more flexible buying options helped drive increased spending. U.S. OOH revenue rose 10.7% year over year during the second quarter, reaching $3.16 billion, accordi

AI search is quickly becoming a default research step before a customer visits a store, books a service, or calls a support line. For multi-location and enterprise brands, that often means AI-generated answers are shaping decisions across hundreds or thousands of locations, and those answers aren’t always accurate. When AI is asked about a brand, it pulls from training data and whatever it can retrieve in real time. When that information is thin, outdated, or conflicting, the model can

Marketers have never had more data or more sophisticated technology at their disposal. AI can optimize campaigns in real time, while modern media planning tools can model thousands of budget scenarios in minutes. Yet many brands still struggle to turn those capabilities into better marketing performance. The problem isn’t necessarily the technology. It’s that the organizations responsible for media planning, measurement and budget allocation haven’t evolved as quickly as the

Digital out-of-home advertising (DOOH) has spent years adding screens, data and programmatic buying capabilities. A series of recent developments suggests the next phase will be less about adding inventory and more about making that inventory easier to buy, measure and verify. Two announcements this week illustrate that shift. VIOOH has partnered with Screenverse to make more than 38,000 U.S. digital screens available through its programmatic DOOH platform. Separately, Big Happy and Veridooh

The digital screens already operating inside restaurants, retailers, hotels, gyms, and other commercial properties are increasingly becoming more than signage. They are becoming media inventory. Samsung Electronics America and Smartify Media are accelerating that transition through a partnership connecting Samsung commercial displays to Smartify’s digital out-of-home (DOOH) advertising network. Samsung VXT Ads, Powered by Smartify, allows participating display owners to make screen inve

CTV is becoming more measurable, but the bigger shift may be how that measurement influences media allocation. New Lifesight research suggests CTV can affect search, social and second-screen behavior. Connected TV has steadily moved beyond its traditional role as an upper-funnel awareness channel. As marketers gain more ways to connect CTV exposure with digital activity and business outcomes, the question is increasingly not simply whether CTV works, but where it belongs within the broader me