Street Fight Daily: Google Tests DIY Local-News App, Twitter Adds New Ad Tactic for Brands

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

Google Is Testing a New App That Would Let Anyone Publish Local News Stories (Slate)
Google is testing a new tool for people to report and publish local news stories, called Bulletin. The app is in a “limited pilot” in just two cities: Nashville and Oakland. Google confirmed the project on Friday.

Selling to Multi-Location Brands: Sizing Up the Prospects (Street Fight)
David Card: Multi-location brands have been a little slower to embrace digital technologies in support of their local marketing and advertising than SMBs, but that’s changing pretty fast. The biggest of those companies still tend to be a little conservative, but they’re shifting digital spending towards local and adopting a broader variety of tactics. 

Twitter Now Lets Advertisers Sponsor Publishers’ Moments (TechCrunch)
Twitter has added a new advertising product to its lineup. The company announced Friday it’s offering brands the ability to sponsor Moments – the “Stories”-like feature that includes a series of tweets, often including images, GIFs and video – from select publishers. 

Q&A: Does Google’s Latest Product Mean Death by a Thousand Cuts for Brands (Street Fight)
Google really left businesses hanging with the Q&A release, Mike Blumenthal tells David Mihm in their biweekly column: “We had enough engineering cycles that we could “step into the breach” of what is obviously a big brand problem. Whether it is long term or not depends on what Google can parse from the questions in terms of improving results.”

Morgan Stanley Says Amazon’s Red-Hot Ad Biz Not a Threat to Duopoly (Business Insider)
Morgan Stanley says those hoping for a challenge to the duopoly shouldn’t hold their breath because Amazon is competing in a different space.

Consumer Goods Brands Are Looking More at Performance-Based Ads (Digiday)
CEOs at consumer goods companies are feeling the heat from investors to deliver top-line growth, forcing them to treat marketing as a value driver rather than a cost.

Airbnb Is Expanding Its Experiences Feature to 200 Cities (The Verge)
Airbnb is investing $5 million in its Experiences program, and will expand the initiative to include 200 cities in the United States this year. Experiences is part of an push by Airbnb to expand beyond offering just short-term rentals in recent years.

Walmart Has a New Ally: Japan’s Rakuten (WSJ)
Walmart is joining with Japan’s largest online retailer, Rakuten Inc., to bolster its efforts to compete with Amazon.com Inc. in Asia and the U.S.

How Much Privacy People Will Give Up for Personalized Experiences (AdWeek)
Poor personalization resulting from a lack of trust costs companies trillions of dollars annually, according to new research from Accenture Strategy, which surveyed 24,877 consumers across 33 countries.

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