AdMonsters to Tackle Digital Ad Challenges During Advertising Week
Since the first banner ad appeared in 1994, just one thing has remained constant in digital advertising: change. On September 26 during Advertising Week in New York, OPS NY will bring together ad operations and media technology leaders to tackle challenges and work to navigate the latest shifts in our industry, while staying competitive and profitable. Click for a Street Fight discount…
Street Fight Daily: McDonald’s Tests Mobile Ordering, ‘Showrooming’ Threat Wanes
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology… McDonald’s Testing Mobile Order App for U.S. Stores (Business Insider)… Maybe Showrooming Isn’t Killing Retailers After All (Businessweek)… SMB Twitter Followers Show Devotion (eMarketer)…
Local Media Companies Need to Decentralize to Survive
As applied to information technology, centralization is an error that needs correction. The concept of centralization is counterintuitive to the network, because the network sees every node as equal. The real business opportunities are all local, not in bundling everything together to create scale in order to accumulate digital pennies…
Street Fight Daily: Apple’s NFC Alternative, Google Faces ‘Street View’ Lawsuit
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology… With iBeacon, Apple is Going To Dump NFC (GigaOm)… Google Loses Appeal in Street View Privacy Case (Reuters)… Yelp’s Newest Weapon Against Fake Reviews: Lawsuits (BloombergBusinessweek)…
5 Things SMBs Can Do to Optimize for Mobile Search
Recent data from Google found that 94% of smartphone users have searched for local information, 70% have called a business after searching, 66% visited in person, and 90% of these users acted within 24 hours. So what do SMBs need to do to ensure they’ll get calls from potential customers who are searching on mobile?
Case Study: Managing Online Reputation in a Healthcare Setting
As the healthcare industry evolves, it’s becoming increasingly common for physicians to utilize hyperlocal tools for both patient acquisition and retention. As the public relations director at Nova Medical Group, one of the largest integrative primary care practices in Northern Virginia, Melanie Schmidt is responsible for spearheading the group’s digital marketing initiatives. She works with hyperlocal vendors like Demandforce, CriticMania, and Binary Fountain on patient acquisition and retention efforts…
Street Fight Daily: PayPal Tracks You In-Store, Twitter Buys MoPub
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology… Now PayPal Aims To Track You In Real Life (AllThingsD)… Twitter Plans to Sell Ads for Other Companies With MoPub Acquisition (New York Times)… Foursquare Now Lets You Search for Individual Menu Items (Mashable)…
Placeable CEO: Local Directories May Die Off
Thanks to changing strategic incentives and evolving trends in the search market, Placeable’s CEO Ari Kaufman believes that Google may make changes to its local algorithm that work to push traffic directly to first parties, or keep traffic within its own ecosystem altogether. Street Fight caught up with Kaufman to talk about the state of the local search ecosystem, why Google might devalue directories, and what it means for large brands.
6 Ways Hyperlocal Publishers Can Take Advantage of Online Promotions
Local merchants are funneling an increasingly large share of their ad budgets toward online promotions, and hyperlocal publishers are well positioned to take advantage of this trend. Here are seven tips for how hyperlocal publishers and local media groups can best take advantage of the shift toward online promotions…
Street Fight Daily: Groupon Buys Booking App, Bing Adds Local Inventory
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology… Groupon Buys European Last-Minute Hotel Booking App Blink To Boost Its Travel Business (TheNextWeb)… Bing To Include Local Product Inventory In Search Results (SearchEngineLand)… Foursquare Touts 40M Users In Bid For Renewed Relevancy (CNet)…
Case Study: Boosting Customer Retention With a Card-Based Program
Local merchants need to keep their customer base in mind when deciding which hyperlocal loyalty platform to use. After experimenting with a mobile-only loyalty platform, Alex Su, the owner of Tpumps Tea Shop in San Mateo, Calif.,was surprised to learn that his customers weren’t as interested in earning rewards through their smartphones as he had previously thought. A different kind of loyalty program from FiveStars provided an alternative…
LBMA Podcast: Ubimo and Belly Funded, Foursquare’s Pro-active Recs
On the show: Foursquare’s proactive recommendations; McDonalds’ NFC Happy Table; JDS Uniphase launches Location Insight Services; 7Eleven invests in Belly with Andreessen Horowitz. Plus our featured app is CO Everywhere, our mobile minute with Chuck Martin looks at the biggest threat to your mobile strategy, and our special guest is journalist and author Nora Young…
Street Fight Daily: PayPal Redesigns App, Braintree’s on the Block
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology… PayPal Refreshes Mobile App to Woo Shoppers and Fight Off Rivals (New York Times)… Braintree Is On The Block, Had Acquisition Talks With Square (TechCrunch)… Last-Minute Deal App HotelTonight Raises $45 Million (Wall Street Journal)…
GoDaddy Cleans Up Marketing and Simplifies Product to Woo VSBs
The internet services company announced a major rebrand this morning, chucking the racy ads and convoluted site for a cleaner product and entrepreneur-focused pitch aimed at repositioning GoDaddy as a small business marketing firm. The rebranding includes a new marketing campaign as well as a redesign of both the company’s site and its flagship website-building product…
Is ‘The Road’ a Community News Model That Can Go the Distance?
What to make of the ambitious “The Road” project that C-Ville Weekly in Charlottesville, Va., presented last week on its website? Is this multimedia extravaganza a promising way for community sites to go in their Holy Grail-like quest for a news model that will engage users and attract advertisers — and make for a better community, to boot? Keep in mind that “The Road” consumed more than 300 hours of editorial and production time, but didn’t produce a single dollar of revenue…
How to Find Great Salespeople for Your Hyperlocal Business
Finding the right salespeople is one of the keys to success for any hyperlocal startup with plans to sell to local merchants, but identifying and hiring professionals with the right skillsets isn’t always as easy as it sounds. In an effort to bring some clarity to the issue, we checked in with five hyperlocal executives and asked about their strategies for finding salespeople who can effectively sell to local merchants. Here is their advice…
Daily Voice Reports First ‘Unit’ Profitability (With an Asterisk)
The regional hyperlocal news network Daily Voice says it has recorded its first “unit” profitability for operations covering its 41 sites in the hotly competitive suburban Connecticut and New York market. The profit — which does not include corporate costs — was a tiny $2,000 for August, according to CEO Carll Tucker. But it comes after the company burned through $18 million in four years and experienced near-death six months ago…