Street Fight Daily: Amazon Go Opens to Public, Advertisers See Video Pivot in News Feed Change

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

Amazon Go, High-Tech Grocery Store Sans Cashiers, Opens to the Public (Recode)
Though the unveiling will take place about a year later than the company originally planned, it will still be met with great intrigue because of the store’s unique technology that Amazon believes can make checkout lines a thing of the past. NYT: Inside Amazon Go.

5 Tech Companies Changing the Grocery Industry (Street Fight)
The percentage of grocery purchases influenced by digital media nearly doubled last year, and by 2025 roughly one-fifth of U.S. grocery sales are expected to happen online. Now it’s time for technology vendors to step in with new innovations, so that the industry can continue to evolve. Here are five firms working to change the way we buy groceries right now.

As Facebook Changes Its Feed, Advertisers See Video Ambitions (NYT)
As advertisers examine the details that Facebook has shared so far, like reducing videos from publishers in the feed and giving priority to content that can “spark conversation,” some see an opening for the company’s nascent Facebook Watch video section and its live videos. And, of course, for the ad dollars that accompany such content.

ThriveHive Balances Software and Human Support to Power SMB Marketing (Street Fight)
“So many people on the software side just want to solve everything with software, and on the agency side, there’s too much of a bias toward people. We think the right combination is in between,” said Steve Gottlieb, senior director of demand generation at ThriveHive.

Google’s Emphasis on Webpage Speed Will Hit CNN, WSJ, Other Top Sites (Digiday)
Google has been using page speed to rank sites for desktop search results, and now it’s getting ready to do the same for mobile. In a blog post published Jan. 17, it said that starting in July, page speed will be a ranking factor for mobile searches.

Something Doesn’t Add Up About America’s Advertising Market (Economist)
A few platform firms, Jaron Lanier fears, will control what consumers see and hear and other companies will have to bid away their profits (by buying ads) to gain access to them. Advertising will be a tax that strangles the rest of the economy, like medieval levies on land.

Uber Eats Acquires Ando (TechCrunch)
As food delivery hopefuls like Deliveroo and Amazon get more involved in the making of food themselves, Uber’s food delivery branch Uber Eats has made an acquisition that could see the company also producing more of the product it’s bringing to its customers.

A New Wave of Bad Ads is Hijacking Even Top-Tier Sites (Fast Company)
Over the past couple of weeks, internet users have been complaining of a new wave of hard-to-close, misleading, and malicious ads popping up across websites big and small. Some of the ads even make it impossible for people to read news and other content.

Black Box Wines Feeds In-Store Data into Programmatic Campaign (MediaPost)
Constellation released findings from a programmatic advertising campaign in which marketers for the brand Black Box Wines fed in-store data into the platform to optimize the ads in near real-time, over a period of about 10 days. 

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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]