Street Fight Daily: Google’s New Payment Project, Real Estate’s Digital Decline
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology…
Google Said To Be Testing A Point-of-Sale System Called Plaso (GigaOm)
Google Wallet may not have been the hit Google had hoped, but according to a news report, the Silicon Valley giant may try to breath new life into its mobile payments business by tackling not just the digital billfold, but the digital cash register as well.
Florists Hate Valentine’s Day — BloomNation Thinks It Can Change Their Mind (Street Fight)
Here’s something you may not know about Valentine’s Day: many florists hate it. Americans will spend $18.9 billion on flowers, candy and more for the holiday — but the spike in demand typically does not translate into big profits for small flower shops.
Borrell: Real Estate To Scale Back On Digital (NetNewsCheck)
Real estate agents and brokers will be scaling back their digital advertising, one of the rare categories to roll back on online digital display. The 2% decrease in real estate digital advertising suggests that the industry may have reached its digital saturation point, according to a report by Borrell Associates.
How Iowa’s Gazette Is Making Deep-Dive Local Journalism Sustainable (Street Fight)
Tom Grubisich: Display ads, even successfully targeted ones, aren’t likely to pay for the resources that go into The Gazette’s innovative journalism, where packages can take weeks or months to produce. As a result, sponsorships and memberships are the focus.
An Attribution Standard? IPG, Horizon, Digitas and Others Agree to Use One Firm (AdAge)
Location data firm Placed closed on deals with several media agencies recently, all of which have agreed to use its mobile measurement system as an attribution standard. IPG, Digitas and others now use Placed’s mobile location data as the go-to gauge for determining the impact of mobile advertising on store shopping visits.
LivingSocial Offloads Let’s Bonus, Its Last Non-English Business (TechCrunch)
The downsizing of LivingSocial’s international operations continues: the daily deals site has sold Let’s Bonus — and its operations in Spain, Portugal, Italy and Chile. This is a milestone for LivingSocial: Let’s Bonus was LivingSocial’s last remaining non-English language business.
Getting Yelp Reviews When All Else Fails (Blumenthals)
Mike Blumenthal: It’s hard getting any review but it’s particularly hard getting Yelp reviews. They filter many, many more than make it through. I have seen filtering rates as high as 85% of first time reviewers. Unless the reviewer has either lots of Yelp friends or lots of Yelp reviews, their reviews will be nuked.
Will SMBs Invest In Mobile Payments? (eMarketer)
As consumers slowly open up to mobile payments, small businesses are following suit. According to a study, 60.4% of US small-business owners said they would consider adopting mobile payments, such as Apply Pay, Google Wallet or Square, in 2015.
TripAdvisor’s Fourth-Quarter Profit Soars (MarketWatch)
Like its peers, the travel portal has stepped up advertising spending and offering discounts and loyalty programs in response to increased competition that ranges from referral sites that search multiple sites simultaneously to startups that offer unpublished discounts and stays in apartments and spare rooms.
OpenTable Fixed Reservations. MyTime Fixes Appointments For Everything Else (TechCrunch)
MyTime, a startup that allows you to instantly book any haircut, massage, dentist, or salon, grew up fast. It raised $3 million led by UpFront Ventures, and grew to 75 employees serving millions of active users. Now MyTime is launching on Android, and building out its way to modernize independent local shops.
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