Case Study: Using Digital Coupons to Generate Calls

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In today’s competitive landscape, digital marketing firms are honing their sales pitches and investing in innovative new technologies to stand out from the pack. But when Don Fuller’s Appliance Repair co-owner Lisa Fuller evaluates a vendor, she looks at something that’s harder to quantify — sincerity.

Hyperlocal Publishing: Who Stumbled, Who Was Nimble and What’s Next?

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The big story in hyperlocal publishing this year was the fall of corporate hyperlocal pureplays like Patch, and Everyblock — big bets that failed to reach sustainability. And so as we look to the New Year, a persistent question once again emerges for community news: when will publishers find a digital model that works?

6 Ways Hyperlocal Publishers Can Take Advantage of Online Promotions

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Local merchants are funneling an increasingly large share of their ad budgets toward online promotions, and hyperlocal publishers are well positioned to take advantage of this trend. Here are seven tips for how hyperlocal publishers and local media groups can best take advantage of the shift toward online promotions…

DataSphere’s Cowan: Still A Big Opportunity In Coupons For SMBs

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The online coupon space would seem tired, over-saturated, and too fragmented. Yet DataSphere is making a big push into the local-business coupon space, launching a consumer-facing site, LocalSaver. Gary Cowan, SVP or product and marketing at DataSphere, talks about the company’s plans to become “the RetailMeNot of local business coupons” and drive customers through local companies’ doors…

Street Fight Daily: Uber Looks Beyond Taxis, Foursquare Launches Self-Serve Product

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technologyOn-Demand Everything? Uber Might Steer In A New Direction (CNet)… Foursquare Launches Self-Serve Promoted Listings For Small Businesses (MarketingLand)… Shopkick Adds In-App Purchases To Help Retailers Fight Amazon: ‘We Are The Anti-Amazon Coalition’ (TechCrunch)…

Which Hyperlocal Startup Will Be Next to IPO?

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“[The markets] are probably as, or in many cases, more open to [hyperlocal companies] today, largely because they’re seeing some early success in other models,” said First Analysis’ Todd Van Fleet. “They know it can be done; it’s just a question of having the right model. Whereas Groupon may have created a disconcerting tone across the space, you have had the success of Angie’s List, Yelp and even mobile payments players like Square prove that a portion of the [local business marketplace] can be won.”

6 Ways That Broadcasters Can Embrace Hyperlocal

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As local television viewership continues to decline, broadcasters are increasingly looking for ways to expand their offerings to advertisers. One way they’re doing that is by utilizing hyperlocal channels. To find out more about what broadcasters should know before getting involved in hyperlocal, we consulted with experts in the fields of local media and online advertising…

Selling Local Is Hard — Here’s What You Need to Do to Make It Work

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For the past couple of months I’ve been testing a new targeted local online advertising product as part of my fellowship project at the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute.The test has been essentially to sell the product to regional businesses within a given market. And at the end of the two-month trial, after calling on more than 150 businesses multiple times, I have a much greater appreciation not only for local salespeople but for the brands in the marketplace that can sell local…

#SFSNYC: Making Data Work for Hyperlocal Media

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In the wake of the Journatic scandal, the role of automation in hyperlocal publishing remains uncertain. Leaders from top hyperlocal media companies addressed the issue during a panel at Street Fight Summit on Wednesday. They discussed how use of data is affecting media today and the way it can make scale possible tomorrow…

Street Fight Daily: Why Hyperlocals Flop, Everyblock Launches Ads

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.The Neighborhood Watch: Why Do Community News Sites, Once Hailed as the Future of Journalism, so Often Flop? (AdWeek)… EveryBlock Launches Native Ads (Everyblock Blog)… Far Fewer People Are Using Facebook Offers Than Facebook’s News Feed Says (Business Insider)…

Local TV Stations: The Sleeping Beasts in Hyperlocal News

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Resting on the laurels of legacy profits only gets you so far. Just ask newspaper publishers. When you really take a good look at the local television business, it’s clear this is an industry waiting to be disrupted — and when that happens, outlets that haven’t invested sufficiently in digital won’t have much to hold onto…

DataSphere Adds Belo to Its Community News Clients

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Hyperlocal middleman DataSphere has added Belo Corp. and 14 of its TV stations in top markets to its client list of broadcast chains who have gone digital at the community level. The Belo markets that DataSphere will serve with tech and sales services include Dallas/Fort Worth, Houston, Seattle/Tacoma and Phoenix…

‘Legacy’ Media in Phoenix Reach Out to Communities

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Earlier this year, the Gannett-owned Arizona Republic and its sister TV station, KPNX, went hyperlocal in an audacious way. The metro region’s two major “legacy” media embarked on a plan to grow editorial contributors from the community — the affluent, well-educated and rapidly growing East Valley, including the city of Scottsdale. So how is this experiment going six months later? To find out, I put some questions to John Triplett, the content partnership editor at the Republic…

Getting Local Online Ad Dollars to Flow Into Hyperlocal News

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Hyperlocal news sites are turning up everywhere, but advertisers aren’t following them nearly as fast. “Advertisers don’t want to be around local news,” Gordon Borrell, CEO of Borrell Associates, told Street Fight. I went to several people building business models around hyperlocal news to find out how they are planning to turn the tables on Borrell’s assessment…

NJ’s TAP Grows Indie Hyperlocal Network Through Licensing

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Under the licensing program, participants pay a $2,500 fee in their first year, $5,000 in year two and $10,000 in year three, plus 10% of their ad revenue. Alternative Press publisher Mike Shapiro says a licensee, “after the three-year ramp up, should bring in $50,000 to $100,000 in income (after expenses have been taken out for licensing fees, freelance, ad commissions, marketing etc.).”

Will Retargeting Destroy Hyperlocal Chain Models?

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Ad retargeting damages the economics of hyperlocal networks hoping to make any real ad revenues selling to larger buyers. These same buyers can – and increasingly do – use retargeting to get the same Internet users at a fraction of the cost. This is another example of how hyperlocal actually scales down better than it scales up…

Do Datasphere’s 50M UVs Make It a Model for Hyperlocal Scale?

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What Datasphere excels at is scaling, with superb technology — and, of course, finding that sweet spot between the aggregators and high-cost editorial operations. Is this the future of hyperlocal? The 50 million unique visitors to their TV stations’ community sites have provided a kind of answer…

DataSphere Lands $8 Million in Additional Funding

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DataSphere Technologies has raised $8 million in investor financing to continue growing its business, which creates and maintains community websites for TV stations owned by Gannett, Meredith, and other major “legacy” media companies. The company’s 1,900 community and neighborhood sites now reach 50 million unique visitors monthly…

Battle in Seattle: ‘Indie’ West Seattle Blog vs. Corporate KOMO

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West Seattle has two major hyperlocal news sites, and they represent 180-degree-opposed forces in online community news: independent sites that entrepreneurs fund from their wallets, and big-media-financed sites that draw on millions of dollars from corporate treasuries…

Datasphere’s Cowan on How TV Stations Are Going Hyperlocal Online

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Local TV stations are going hyperlocal in a big way. While some of their initial efforts were heavy on car crashes and pet stories, the accelerating trend is toward higher-quality, more comprehensive community coverage. Datasphere’s Gary Cowan talks about the trend and its significance…