LBMA Podcast: Pinterest Adds Location to Every Place Pin, Niantic Labs Raises $20M
On the show: Pinterest Place Pins to add automatic location data; Niantic Labs raises $20 million from Google, Pokémon, and Nintendo; Australia’s Westfield malls and CommBank team up for beacon play; Drinkeasy SMS craft spirits delivery service; Onomichi map provides “cat’s-eye view;” MoveLoot does the heavy lifting; RetailNext acquires Pikato. Plus, news from Shoe Carnival and SIM Partners; Tostitos Canada; and Gimbal and Phigital.
Sponsored Content: Hyperlocal Strategy Updates Needed for Two National Drug Store Chains
This month’s Brand Battle, in conjunction with Brandify, compares the local digital marketing footprint of two of the country’s largest pharmacy chains: CVS and Walgreens. The contest was close on several counts, but Walgreens emerged as the winner, edging CVS in five of the six categories evaluated.
5 Programmatic Ad Buying Platforms for SMBs
Programmatic buying has a reputation for being geared toward large-scale advertisers buying high volumes of impressions. But more vendors are developing programmatic solutions aimed directly at the SMB market. Here are five platforms that give smaller advertisers the ability to plan, buy, and target digital ads in real-time.
Local Visionary Award Winners Announced
The 2015 Street Fight Summit in New York saw the presentation of the first annual Local Visionary Awards, an eight-category competition designed to honor the very best campaigns, companies, ideas, and individuals in local marketing and commerce. The Innovator of the Year award went to Yext CEO Howard Lerman.
#SFSNYC: Beyond the Check-In: Big Data Analytics and the Evolution of Foursquare
Dennis Crowley started Foursquare in 2009 from his kitchen in Manhattan with a lofty vision: Amass enough data to map out specific areas, build a location-based recommendation engine, and create navigation software. But when the company introduced gaming dynamics to encourage check-ins, that’s what it became known for. Today, Foursquare’s ambitions and vision lie well beyond the check-in.
#SFSNYC: Investor Ted Leonsis and BuzzFeed Editor-in-Chief Ben Smith on Media and the Local Economy
The Street Fight Summit played host to a wide-ranging conversation between BuzzFeed editor-in-chief Ben Smith and investor Ted Leonsis. The fireside chat touched on Leonsis’s decades of local economy expertise, stemming from his many investments in and experiences with media ventures, professional sports teams, and ecommerce ventures, including Groupon.
#SFSNYC: Google, Yelp, and ironSource on How the New Generation of Mobile Search Is Changing Everything
Mobile has become an automatic, subconscious extension of our digital lives, and technologies that leverage the versatility of smartphones are maturing rapidly. But the apps vs. web debate continues to rage. And where does search, which has existed since the early days of the internet, fit into the picture?
#SFSNYC: ReachLocal, ShopKeep, and Swipely on Whether or Not Vertical Approaches to Local Inevitably Become Horizontal
Small businesses have a lot of options when it comes to choosing tools that keep things running smoothly. In fact, they have a lot of options even when partnering with a single vendor because companies within the connected local economy are transforming into marketing one-stop shops for advertising, point-of-sale (POS), and other solutions critical to the daily operations of SMBs.
Case Study: Mattress Retailer Captures Millennials with Digital Strategies
The vast majority of mattress sales still take place in brick-and-mortar stores. However, America’s Mattress of Onalaska owner Dave Weinberger says he’s found that millennial shoppers are increasingly doing their pre-shopping research online. In response, he’s begun shifting his advertising budget away from offline channels and toward digital tactics, like call tracking and recording, search marketing, and online promotions.
Street Fight Daily: Snapchat Cuts Ties with Yahoo, Publishers Share Digital Advertising Strategies
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Why Snapchat Axed Yahoo from Discover (Fast Company)… What’s Actually Working in Digital Advertising? 8 Publishers on How They’re Bringing in Money (Nieman Lab)… Yelp Is Using Image Search to Change How It Finds You a Bar (Wired)…
How Gannett’s Cost-Cutting and Breakthrough Video Ads Helped Land Journal Media Group
In less than six months, the newly constituted Journal Media Group did a 180-degree about-face, shifting from a strategy focused on acquisitions to being acquired by Gannett. The USA Today publisher brought two things that JMG couldn’t match: The proven ability to consistently wring substantial cost savings out of expansion and a digital ad strategy that holds the promise of making everybody — advertisers, audiences, and stockholders — happy.
Street Fight Daily: Target Partners with Techstars, Yahoo Exec Leaves for Square
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Target Teams Up with Techstars to Create a Retail-Focused Startup Accelerator (TechCrunch)… Top Yahoo Exec Jackie Reses Heads to Square as Senior Exec (Recode)… Publishers Straddle the Apple-Google, App-Web Divide (New York Times)…
The Price of Free Listings
When the Yellow Pages directory came out once a year, if your business’ phone number was printed incorrectly, you were in trouble. It was the same with local business listings on the internet, except that instead of one or two books, there were thousands of websites carrying your bad data. This added up to a serious headache for multi-location brands and a serious opportunity for solutions providers that could bring order to the free business listings chaos. Here’s a look at how listings management has evolved.