Street Fight Daily: Angie’s List Acquired by HomeAdvisor, News Orgs Experiment with Amazon Echo

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

Angie’s List Acquired by IAC’s HomeAdvisor in Deal Valued at More than $500 Million (VentureBeat)
Angie’s List has entered into a definitive agreement to merge with IAC/InterActiveCorp’s HomeAdvisor in a deal that’s valued at more than $500 million. Both brands will be retained, and the deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter of this year.

How Harman Takes Electronics Marketing to the Local Level (Street Fight)
Having the customer’s ear is literally what Harman International wants, but getting their attention at the local level takes more than a few steps for a consumer electronics maker. Shobhit Kapoor, Harman’s vice president of global brand marketing, caught up with Street Fight recently to talk about how the company thinks about connecting with local consumers.

NPR, the AP, and Local Newspapers Are Experimenting with Amazon Echo (Poynter)
The current generation of news summaries is just the start, said Francesco Marconi, a senior strategy manager who heads development of voice for news for the Associated Press.  With deep experience in broadcast, AP is well-positioned to write “a suite of top stories” to be spoken by Alexa or a human voice, he said.

Street Culture: Pointy Focusing on People and Product, Not Process (Street Fight)
Dublin-based digital search platform startup Pointy is still at that point where the culture is just what it is, without special definitions or structure. “The number of people on our team now is small, almost painfully small,” says co-founder Mark Cummins. “There’s not a lot of structure. Well, there is structure, but there’s not a lot of process around it.”

Google is Testing a Job-Search Feature that Could Rival LinkedIn — And Facebook (Quartz)
Google is apparently testing a new job-search feature that includes its own job portal. The testing was caught in the wild by search engine optimization consultant Dan Shure on April 28.

How Can Retailers’ Digital Advertising Always ‘Fuel the Funnel’? (eMarketer)
If the majority of purchases still happen in the physical store, why should retailers increase investment in digital? eMarketer’s Tricia Carr spoke with Courtney McKlveen, Yahoo’s vice president and industry lead of retail, travel and quick-service restaurants (QSR), about the underlying opportunities that digital advertising has for retailers.

5 Facebook Advertising Mistakes Far Too Many Brands Make (AdWeek)
Larry Alton: While there are arguably more cost-effective social media advertising platforms than Facebook, few feature such powerful audience segmenting opportunities. Unfortunately, a lot of brands squander the opportunity to generate a return by making common yet avoidable mistakes.

Twitter Announces New Live Shows from the WNBA, Buzzfeed, Viacom, and More (TechCrunch)
Looks like Twitter’s streaming video news deal with Bloomberg was just the first of more than a dozen content partnerships that it planned to announce Monday. The company unveiled the full slate at the NewFronts, where online publishers pitch their content to advertisers.

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Joe Zappa is the Managing Editor of Street Fight. He has spearheaded the newsroom's editorial operations since 2018. Joe is an ad/martech veteran who has covered the space since 2015. You can contact him at [email protected]