Survey Shows Rise In Mobile Search as a Starting Point for Consumers
A new survey, released by Telmetrics and xAd, indicates that there is increasing use of mobile devices by consumers as a part of their path-to-purchase, as well as increasing desire for local. The results found that 45% of consumers go to their mobile device first when starting a search. One-third said they used mobile throughout their purchasing process, two-thirds switched to another device or converted offline…
Street Fight Daily: Foursquare’s Plans Leaked, Google Now on iOS
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.… Leaked Doc Shows Foursquare’s Big Plans for Your Check-in Data (CNet)… Google Brings Virtual Assistant to iOS ‘Now’ (Internet2Go)… Jack Dorsey Talks Square and Wearable Devices (New York Times)…
As Tide Turns, Foursquare CEO Dennis Crowley Responds to Critics
The technology community seems to have turned on Foursquare in recent months, with some people publicly deriding the once-adored company. Dennis Crowley, the company’s founder, responded to criticism Monday morning, asserting that Foursquare is in the process of “basically reinventing local search.”
How National Advertisers Can Market Locally Without Losing Brand Consistency
The biggest challenge large brands face when utilizing local marketing platforms is keeping their messages consistent. Sixty-four percent of brands surveyed are looking for ways to eliminate the customer confusion that can occur when different marketing messages are sent out across competing platforms, and 81% say communicating a consistent brand message is their top priority for the upcoming year. Here are five ways that brands can do just that…
What Hyperlocal Marketers Can Learn From Disney’s Wearable Devices
We talk a lot in the hyperlocal industry about what the future of offline marketing and commerce will look like. Mostly it would seem to involve taking the advantages of online marketing and shopping (customization, personalization, analytics, actionable CRM data, etc.) and bringing them into the real world of retail stores. Different players have been experimenting with different elements of this online-to-offline migration of technology, but the Walt Disney Company has really taken the ball and run with it…
Openings & New Hires at Amazon, AOL, WebMD, Edmunds, Swipely and more…
Ray King is an extremely clever and creative visionary in the space and as a graduate of M.I.T. majoring in computer science and later becoming the CEO of Snapnames. He is a perfectionist. His new company Top Level Design, seeks to capitalize on new “top-level” domains awaiting approval. Read about more hyperlocal execs on the move in this week’s Movers & Shakers column…
LBMA PODCAST: Tempo Founder Discusses Calendars as an OS
Welcome to This Week in Location Based Marketing. In this week’s episode, hosts Rob Woodbridge and Asif Khan talk about Nike’s use of 3D holographs to sell shoes in Amsterdam; paying by sound in Beijing; K-Mart uses check-ins to promote the world’s largest bake sale. And special guest Raj Singh, founder of Tempo talks about the calendar as the operating system.
Street Fight Daily: Twitter Tests Local Discovery, Bing Aggregates Deals (Again)
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.… Twitter Testing New Local Discovery Features — And It’s About Time (AllThingsD)… Microsoft Quietly Shuts Down Bing Deals, Launches Bing Offers As A Replacement (TechCrunch)… Belly Dance: Can Lightbank and Chicago’s Hot New Company Avoid Groupon’s Missteps? (PandoDaily)…
Do Community News Sites Really Need to Become ‘Digital Agencies’?
For answers, I went to Julie Brooks, CEO of eCape.com, who went into and then out of, an ambitious program of agency-like marketing services; Mike Orren, president of the new marketing service firm Speakeasy, which he co-founded with the Dallas Morning News; and Carll Tucker, CEO of Daily Voice, who is considering expansion of marketing services it offers.
Case Study: California Fitness Studio Drives Referrals With Digital Program
Ninety-two percent of consumers trust “earned media” — like word-of-mouth referrals — above other forms of paid advertising. At b2be Sports & Wellness, a high-end fitness studio in Chula Vista, California, Emmanuel Corona is looking to capitalize on this trend, partnering with Perkville to reward customers for referring their friends…
Local Search for Events: The Great Missed Opportunity
My jumping off point for this week’s column is a recent post from Greg Sterling, where he observes that despite all the impressive innovation around local search in recent years, no one has launched a truly useful local events service. I have had this feeling for years and wasn’t sure if it was just me. But if Greg doesn’t know about a local events service that truly works, I think it’s fair to say one doesn’t exist. So pay attention, developers and entrepreneurs: local events need a killer app…
How Consumer Messaging Is Going From ‘Push’ to ‘Pull’
The biggest battle coming in the world of marketing is a 180-degree shift in the routing of commerce-related messages. Today, we call them “advertisements,” one-directional messages FROM somebody with something to sell TO somebody who may potentially be a buyer. Tomorrow, the messages will come FROM those wishing to buy TO those with something to sell…
Street Fight Daily: Facebook Challenges Yelp, Foursquare Rethinks the Web
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.… Facebook Challenges Yelp With Mobile Pages Redesign Featuring Actions, Local Biz Details, And Ratings (TechCrunch)… Foursquare Revamps Business Pages to Take on Yelp as Web Visitors Hit 50 Million per Month (Verge)… Can Yelp Hold Off Foursquare and Facebook? (Screenwerk)…
Locu Adds Yelp to Its Growing List of Publisher Partners
The company has announced a new partnership with local reviews and discovery service Yelp. The partnership, which follows previous deals with OpenTable and CitySearch, means that Locu’s 15,000 local merchant customers will be able to distribute their location, coordinates, hours, and menus to Yelp with real-time updates…
Publisher Dave Harte Weighs in on the Quest for Hyperlocal Success in the U.K.
“I think we’re in a place where the larger media organizations are in the second cycle of trying to rethink hyperlocal, and in the meantime there have been some smaller innovators, often ex-journalists themselves, who are starting to develop out of it,” says the Bourneville Village publisher. “The key still remains having people in place to sell ads.”
The Unique Position of Hyperlocal Publishers in a Real-Time Bidding World
RTB, by definition, is a digital advertising technology that lets marketers buy and publishers sell display ads dynamically, in real time, on an impression-by-impression basis. In this rapidly evolving world, publishers become relegated to a supply of cookies for marketers to target versus an audience targetable through the association of the publisher’s content and audience profiles. Here’s what’s needed for local publishers to unlock more ad inventory value in this environment…