Yelp reviews are a foundation for many SMB marketing programs, so it’s on-topic today. But their actual news is a man-bites-dog reversal: Yelp has just launched two ad units that let national brands promote themselves by highlighting local companies that carry their goods. Sponsored Collections show ads organized around a theme while Seasonal Spotlight ads present a rotating sample of brand holiday campaigns.
We don’t write much about SMB (Small and Mid-size Business) products. But now that I’ve raised the subject, SMB payments and communications platform Podium has raised a $201 million Series D, bringing total funding to $419 million. Podium started as a review-generation platform, but its ability to accept payments within text messages is what’s unusual.
Amazon, which has amassed a vast amount of sensitive information on customers and whose efforts have gone largely unchecked, has now been shown, via confidential documents reviewed by Reuters, to be running a big lobbying effort used to forestall or gut privacy legislation. The effort, led by a former aid to President Biden, has killed or undermined privacy legislation two dozen states.
Email and mobile personalization platform Movable Ink has announced a new integration between its Da Vinci content personalization solution and Adobe Journey Optimizer. Joint customers will be able to develop content assets aimed at each individual email recipient and bring them into Adobe Journey Optimizer for deployment. This builds on an existing integration between Movable Ink Da Vinci and Adobe Campaign.