Street Fight Daily: Google Gets Lift from Maps Ads, Facebook’s E-Commerce Strategy

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology…

Google Sees Lift from Maps Ads, Local Mobile Clicks (MediaPost)
An increasing number of local searches on Google Maps is turning up the volume of search ads serving on the property. Efforts have resulted in increased ad traffic, with brand keywords getting about 3.3% of phone traffic from the “Get location details” click type for advertisers with a brick-and-mortar presence, according to a report released Tuesday.

#SFSNYC: Street Fight Announces Winners of the 2016 Local Visionary Awards (Street Fight)
The 13-category competition honors the very best campaigns, companies, ideas, and individuals working in the local marketing and commerce ecosystem. Nearly 200 submissions were received, and they were judged by a group of innovators and local experts.

Facebook Puts Off Monetization of E-Commerce Efforts to Boost their Popularity (Recode)
Facebook has been encouraging businesses to buy ads intended to drive users inside their brick-and-mortar stores, encouraging users to order food or buy movie tickets using their Facebook accounts, and offering small businesses a place to upload their product catalogues online. And as of now, Facebook isn’t taking a dime. It offers these products for free in hopes that more people will use them.

#SFSNYC: Finding the Next Billion-Dollar Local Startup (Street Fight)
Having a great idea for a new product to launch in the local space is exciting. However, taking an idea and turning it into the next great local company takes money. And sometimes, it takes a lot of money to go from idea to a billion dollar product.

Selling to SMBs: AIDA and the Conversion Zone (Street Fight)
I’m often asked by entrepreneurs and venture capitalists alike to talk about what changes throughout the course of the “bell curve ride” in selling to small and medium-sized businesses — and how organizations need to adapt at each stage in order to ensure continued success. Here’s the best way I can explain how it all works.

BloomReach Acquires Hippo to Create, Personalize, and Measure Every Digital Experience (Venture Beat)
By acquiring the company, BloomReach is in a position to combine its personalization platform with a solution that can leverage data and algorithmic intelligence. This allows it to create, build, personalize, market and measure every digital experience across verticals and geographies.

#SFSNYC: Why Location Data Management Needs Technology and Agency Services (Street Fight)
At Street Fight Summit in New York on Tuesday, Brett Fritz, VP of business development at digital performance marketing company DAC Group, spoke about why marketing and location data management should be done by a mix of agency work and technology.

#SFSNYC: Soleo Announces Version 2.0 of Local Search API (Street Fight)
The local search company announced the launch of its new Local Search API at Street Fight Summit 2016, opening it up to developers to start using in their own projects. This new version brings together natural language processing and its database of over 20 million business listings.

With Founders Out, Rocket-Backed Nestpick Reboots as Apartment Rentals Aggregator (TechCrunch)
Nestpick, the troubled Rocket Internet-backed startup that had ambitious plans to move the entire furnished apartment and room rental process online, is rebooting today under new management and with a different business model and product.

#SFSNYC: Marketers Are Closing in on the Holy Grail of Mobile Attribution (Street Fight)
“What’s super interesting is the fact that we now have a bridge between the digital and physical world,” said Foursquare’s Steven Rosenblatt, talking about how this new rise in data makes it much easier to see what’s going on down to the hyperlocal level.

#SFSNYC: How Local Tech Companies Can Reach Scale in the SMB Ecosystem (Street Fight)
Creating new technology for the SMB space is one thing; trying to achieve any sort of scale is something entirely different. Companies either need to bring on a large sales force to go door to door or they need to partner with one of the much larger companies in the space.

The Rise of Virtual and Augmented Reality Marketing (The Next Web)
With a new form of content comes a new form of marketing. Brands are already jumping into the game, creating original content for VR. BMW and Volvo have offered virtual test drives, Ikea lets you explore a virtual kitchen, and Coca-Cola and McDonald’s let customers create virtual-reality goggles from soda-can packaging and Happy Meal boxes.

Tim Cook Says You Won’t Have to Give Up Your Privacy to Get a Virtual Assistant (Quartz)
Apple CEO Tim Cook doesn’t think the future of artificial intelligence will infringe on users’ privacy the way it does now. “In terms of the balance of privacy and AI, this is a long conversation, but at a high level, this is a false tradeoff,” he said.

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