After Bust, LivingSocial Looks to Boom Again

Share this:

LivingSocial isn’t quite the rocketship it was a few years ago. But, after a year of pulling back, and with a change in leadership in the works, the company is looking for a second wind. Street Fight recently caught up with Doug Miller, chief revenue officer at LivingSocial, to talk about where the company went wrong, how it plans to get back on track, and what wave it looks to ride next…

6 Ways to Use Local Booking Platforms for Marketing

Share this:

When used strategically, hyperlocal booking platforms can do more for a business than just help schedule services and manage client appointments. In many cases, merchants with online booking portals are able to rely on these products for customer acquisition and retention, as well…

Street Fight Daily: CBS Outdoor Goes Public, Alibaba Invests in Retail

Share this:

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technologyCBS Outdoor Shares Rise in First Day of Trading (Wall Street Journal)… Alibaba Invests $692 million in Chinese Department Store Operator (Reuters)… Uber’s Biggest Problem Isn’t Surge Pricing. What If It’s Sexual Harassment by Drivers? (Daily Beast)…

How a Connecticut Network Helps ‘Indie’ News Sites Bridge Revenue Gap

Share this:

Networks of independent community news sites are growing up and expanding out, and one of the biggest is the three-year-old Independent Media Network, which provides multiple layers of services — in advertising, editorial, business and tech — to more than a hundred community and other news operations in Connecticut…

Openings and New Hires at xAd, Kenshoo, PayPal and Local Market Launch

Share this:

Every two weeks, Search Influence’s Kelly Benish — who knows practically everyone in hyperlocal — covers some of the latest job changes taking place in this dynamic industry. In this week’s edition, new hires and jobs at Microsoft, Mediative, hibu, Angie’s List and more…

LBMA Podcast: Bringing Big Data Down to the Moment

Share this:

Top stories of the week include Disney World, the Weather Channel’s Weather FX ad platform, Cloak, Android Wear, the Exist app, TheLadders, PayRange, Indoo.rs, Gigwalk, What3Words and Digicash…

Street Fight Daily: DailyCandy Shut Down, An Omnichannel Rollup

Share this:

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technologyNBCUniversal-Owned DailyCandy and Television Without Pity Will Be Shut Down (Recode)… Nomi Acquires Media Armor To Add Online Marketing Data To Its Offline Marketing Tools (TechCrunch)… GoDaddy Partners With Dwolla On New E-Invoicing Option For Small Businesses (TechCrunch)…

For Local Tech, Fragmentation Is a Problem to Solve — Not Avoid

Share this:

There’s been a noticeable increase in the number of partnerships, ecosystem-driven startups, and overall coordination among the companies looking to help us buy and sell stuff in the real-world. The shift could have deep implications for existing companies, and may create new opportunities for a number of new startups…

Case Study: Local Bakery Chain Scales With Hyperlocal Tools

Share this:

At Cako, a mini bakery chain in the midst of expansion, co-owner Albert Chen says it’s difficult to provide the same level of customer service when he can’t be present inside all of his stores on a 24/7 basis. One way that Chen is working to avoid the mistakes that other growing businesses have made is by utilizing hyperlocal tools that provide him with data about what products and flavors his customers are buying…

Foursquare

Street Fight Daily: Foursquare Ads Tap Twitter, Airbnb Courts Cities

Share this:

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technologyFoursquare’s New Ads Tap Twitter And Require $100K Commitment (AdWeek)… Airbnb Cozies up to Cities (Fortune)… Charting the Years-Long Decline of Local News Reporting (Washington Post)…

The Shifting Line Between Free and Paid Local Marketing Services

Share this:

The manipulation of organic reach on Facebook is one of many examples of the shifting boundary between free and paid local marketing services. In “pure” local search, that boundary has tended to be relatively clear: look for a local business in your typical IYP and you’ll see sponsored listings at the top of the results page, followed by organic results. But that boundary is likely more clear to those of us who know what to look for than it is to the general user…

How One Startup Uses Carrier Data For Real-World Analytics

Share this:

For the most part, in-store tracking startups rely on a device in-store — a wireless router, video camera, or bluetooth beacon — to count customers as they shop. But Canadian startup Viasense has created a new system using existing data from cellular networks to provide businesses with information about their foot traffic — and, more importantly, where that traffic goes next…

Street Fight Daily: Instagram Tests Facebook Places, GOP Hails Uber

Share this:

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technologyInstagram Testing Facebook Places Integration to Replace Foursquare (Fast Company)… GOP Hails App-Based Taxi Service Uber, Says Regulations Stifle It (Wall Street Journal)… Cloud POS Startup Vend Raises $20M From Peter Thiel’s Valar Ventures And Square Peg Capital (TechCrunch)…

5 Local Marketplaces for Childcare Services

Share this:

What Taskrabbit has done for household errands, Uber has done for transportation, and ZocDoc has done for local physician services, a handful of hyperlocal vendors are aiming to now do for childcare. By harnessing the power of social recommendations and connecting parents with babysitters in their own communities, local marketplaces for childcare services are harnessing technology to facilitate online networking within physical communities…

A New Way to Think About Local: Last Mile Advertising

Share this:

While advertisers today seek to take advantage of an increasingly fragmented media environment, those focused on local advertising have different challenges and opportunities in that they are in closer proximity to the point of purchase. Even with the tremendous growth of online shopping and e-commerce, two-thirds of all local purchases are still taking place in-person at brick-and-mortar locations…

Street Fight Daily: GrubHub Prices IPO, Flurry Tracks Users Offline

Share this:

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technologyGrubHub Sets Price Range for I.P.O. (New York Times)… Flurry Launches Service to Track Mobile App Users, Offline (AdAge)… China Set to Cap Transfers Using Mobile-Payment Services (Wall Street Journal)…

With Partnerships, YP’s Consumer Product Takes a Back Seat

Share this:

Last week, YP announced a deal with Yelp in which the Yellow Pages spin-off will sell Yelp’s core advertising product to the company’s small business clients. For YP, and its owner Cerberus Capital, the agreement is the culmination of a deeper strategic push and a tacit acknowledgment that its role as leading consumer brand, which defined its print past, might be waning…

5 Tools to Collect Customer Data Using Checkout Technology

Share this:

Ecommerce retailers have always had a leg up on brick-and-mortar businesses when it comes to collecting data about their customers’ shopping behaviors and buying habits, but now a group of hyperlocal vendors is providing offline merchants with similar sets of tools. These vendors are using data from a merchant’s POS system to build detailed customer profiles, even in an offline environment…

Street Fight Daily: Sprint Eyes Small Business, PayPal Tracks In-Store Visits

Share this:

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technologySprint Turns to Digital Campaign to Make Case to Small Businesses (AdAge)…PayPal to Connect Mobile Ads to In-Store Visits (AdAge)… Does Foursquare Offer Enough to Woo Advertisers Long Term? (AdWeek)…

Probabilistic Device Matching Isn’t Perfect — But It Works

Share this:

The use of probabilistic matching or statistical IDs to link multiple devices to an individual is often dismissed based on dubious accuracy. It’s true that the practice will never be 100% accurate, but even taking the conservative estimate at the lower end of this range, probabilistic matching enables marketers to scale their mobile advertising campaigns with reasonable expectations of performance…