Street Fight Daily: Macy’s and Alibaba Join Forces, Amazon Changes Retail Ad Terms
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology…
Alibaba Lands Macy’s as the First U.S. Department Store For Its Online Portal (Fortune)
In Alibaba’s effort to woo American retailers, the Chinese e-commerce juggernaut announced a significant deal Wednesday — Macy’s. Macy’s China Limited, a joint venture between Macy’s and Chinese retailer Fung Retailing Limited, will launch an online flagship store on Alibaba’s online shopping mall.
Amazon Changes Terms for Retailers Advertising on Its Site (AdAge)
Amazon will stop running so-called “Product Ads” that other retailers can use to promote products on Amazon that the e-commerce giant doesn’t actually sell on its site. Brands were able to use these ads to promote their own sites’ product catalogs to people who were browsing similar products on Amazon.
How the Local Media Consortium Is Leveraging Its Relationship With Google for Higher CPMs (Street Fight)
Tom Grubisich: Aiming to turn “digital dimes” back into the dollars that used to pour into their newspapers and television stations from ads, locally focused media companies formed the Local Media Consortium in 2014. To see how the group is progressing, we recently spoke with Tobias Bennett, LMC’s “programmatic advertising champion.”
Layoffs Hit Groupon’s Restaurant Software Unit as Breadcrumb Founder Leaves (Recode)
Breadcrumb founder Seth Harris, who has run Groupon’s restaurant software and payments business since his startup was acquired in 2012, has left the company, and Groupon has cut about 20 positions in the Breadcrumb unit. It’s yet another bump in the road for Groupon; the company’s stock is currently trading at its lowest point in more than two years.
Study: Local Advertisers Are Leaving Behind $14 Billion in Co-op Marketing Every Year (Street Fight)
According to a recent report from Borrell Associates and Netsertive, 38 percent of local businesses cited “too much paperwork” as the greatest barrier to co-op marketing, and another 38 percent cited “too many rules.” But in ignoring co-op, marketers are ignoring billions of dollars.
Yahoo Sags 4% After Alibaba’s Q2 Earnings Disappointment (TechCrunch)
After Alibaba reported a lower-than-expected financial performance in its second quarter, Yahoo shares fell around four percent in regular trading. Yahoo’s public performance has long been tied to Alibaba, after the American firm spent $1 billion to acquire a large fraction of the Asian tech giant.
StepsAway Solves The “Beacon Problem” For In-Mall Retailers And Shoppers (Marketing Land)
Beacons are one piece of a larger mobile marketing strategy for retailers. A company called StepsAway offers a different, complementary approach to reach broader audiences of shoppers in U.S. malls; it doesn’t rely on beacons or apps but uses guest WiFi networks in malls to send promotional content through a mobile Web-based shopping portal.
Traffic From Google to Wikipedia Is Dropping. Why? (Slate)
The amount of traffic that Google sends to Wikipedia has declined by more than 250 million visits per month. One of the major trends happening at Google is the company’s preference for inserting its own content above the content of other non-Google web sites, even when those sites may be better resources than Google itself.
Microsoft Is Rolling Out Uber, PayPal, and Evernote Add-Ins for Outlook (The Next Web)
Outlook now allows users to schedule an Uber ride, pay for a dinner tab right from your inbox using PayPal, and check out restaurant details via Yelp. The expanded functionality could help Outlook become a more enticing offer than Gmail, which is mostly limited to proprietary features.
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