Street Fight Daily: Mobile to Overtake TV by 2021, Influencer Marketing Needs a Clean-Up

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

Zenith: Mobile Advertising to Overtake TV by 2021 (MediaPost)
As mobile continues to solidify its position as the gateway to consumer attention, advertising in mobile channels will account for 30.5% of global advertising expenditure in 2020, up from 19.2% in 2017, according to a new forecast from Zenith.

Women in Local Marketing Tech: Are We There? Where Are We Going? (Street Fight)
Nancy Shenker & Jim D’Arcangelo: The challenge is national — the solutions may be hyperlocal. At Street Fight Summit 2018, we gave the audience a brief overview of some of the issues facing women in local marketing tech today and what we can do to keep moving in the right direction.

Unilever Demands Influencer Marketing Business Clean Up Its Act (WSJ)
Using personalities popular on social media for promotion may be a hot marketing technique, but it also has a downside, warns one of the world’s biggest advertisers.

PureCars CEO Talks Power of Location Data — And How Some Brands Can Build Beyond It (Street Fight)
Street Fight talked with Sam Mylrea, CEO of PureCars, a marketing automation and business intelligence suite for auto dealers, to discuss how his company uses location data to help dealerships capture the attention of nearby customers.

Google, Rebuilding Its Presence in China, Invests in Retailer JD.com (NYT)
Google’s best-known products have been blocked by the authorities in mainland China for years. If the American internet giant wants that to change someday, then half a billion dollars’ worth of good will couldn’t hurt.

How AI Got Good Enough to Dominate Silicon Valley (Quartz)
Google hired three researchers to seed a new, major projects using neural nets; the technology’s decision-making prowess soon put the words “deep learning” on the lips of every founder and Silicon Valley executive. 

Good and Upworthy Are Getting into the E-Commerce Business (Digiday)
Is there a socially conscious, ethically responsible way for publishers to pursue commerce revenue? Good Media Group is about to find out.

Tronc Reverses Its Much-Derided Name Change (Verge)
Newspaper publisher and ostensible online media company Tronc has acknowledged how silly its name is and will be changing it back to Tribune Publishing.