Street Fight Daily: Big-Box Retailers Report Best Earnings in Years, Mashable Sold for Change

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

Investments in Digital Transformation Pay Dividends for Big-Box Retailers (Bloomberg)
Walmart’s U.S. comparable sales rose 2.7 percent from a year earlier — its strongest growth in this measure in eight years. Best Buy reported domestic comparable sales were up 4.5 percent year-over-year. Home Depot Inc. delivered a whopping 7.9 percent increase in comparable sales.

Why Commercial Banks Are Turning to Proximity Technology (Street Fight)
That location intelligence firms are able to use foot traffic patterns to predict the financial performance of businesses is nothing new. But a new report released shines a light on the ways commercial banks and investment companies are upping the ante by using location data to get the most out of the market.

Mashable Sold at Fire-Sale Price of $50 Million to Ziff Davis (Variety)
Digital-media firm Mashable has clinched a sale for the company — and it’s not for a price that founder Pete Cashmore or investors including Turner were looking for. The price is 20% of Mashable’s valuation of $250 million following a $15 million round of funding last year.

How Thanksgiving Day Store Closures Impact Black Friday Sales (Street Fight)
Shoppers say they don’t want retailers opening their doors on Thanksgiving Day, but research from Foursquare tells a different story. Analyzing proprietary foot traffic data at major retailers, Foursquare found that stores that open earlier on Thanksgiving Day drive more visits and steal share from their competitors.

Raise Report: Yotpo, Leanplum, Globality Secure New Funding (Street Fight)
Every two weeks, we round up some of the biggest fundraises taking place in hyperlocal marketing, commerce, and tech. This week’s edition includes funding for ChartMogul, Choozle, Roomi, and Spirited Media.

Topix Was Getting Crushed by the Duopoly. Now It’s Making Millions Off Them (Inc)
Any publisher that managed to get huge amounts of traffic for free on one of the platforms was bound to become a victim of its own success eventually, because making brands pay to reach consumers is the platforms’ business model. The way to avoid that trap, he thought, would be to pay the platforms for traffic from the get-go and then figure out how to make that traffic profitable.

Amazon’s Exclusive Deal with Calvin Klein Is About Much More Than Underwear (Quartz)
Of course, this isn’t just about Calvin Klein underwear. In 2017, Amazon put traditional brick-and-mortar retailers on notice that it wasn’t just coming for them online. It planned to “disrupt”—as they say in tech—the offline shopping experience, too.

Fast-Changing Industry Trends Force Publishers to Rethink Content Management (AdExchanger)
Allison Mezzafonte: While small sites probably benefit from out-of-the-box solutions, the most scalable solution for larger publishers in a fast-changing industry is a micro-service, API-based architecture, where content input, content storage, monetization and templates are separate services.

Niche or Reach: The Power of Influencer Marketing (Digiday)
Is influencer marketing worth it? The short answer? Maybe. But like any other paid media strategy, it requires granular targeting, or else you end up paying just for impressions.

Why Toyota Now Wants to Be Known as a ‘Mobility’ Company (AdWeek)
Toyota is now a mobility company, a brand busy broadening its offerings to a wide variety of futuristic devices, often with built-in digital capabilities, that enable human motion in ways that go well beyond driving down the road.

Airbnb Acquires Ad Tech Startup AdBasis (TechCrunch)
Airbnb has acquired adtech startup AdBasis, which offers a platform and dashboard for ad testing and optimization. AdBasis published a note on its site indicating that the deal closed on November 13 and that its team will continue to work on digital creative testing and optimization technology at Airbnb.

LBMA Podcast: Google, Dunkin Donuts, Hilton Hotels + Amazon (Street Fight)
This Week in Location Based Marketing is a weekly video podcast from the Location Based Marketing Association with Asif Khan and Rob Woodbridge. On the show: Pause Fest, Vita Moja + DNAfit, FreezeTag, Mapbox buys MapData, Euclid partners with LiveRamp.

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