Borrell: 20% of Local Marketing Budgets Planned for Mobile
Borrell Associates, which specializes in research covering local and online advertising, ha issued a report this week called “Main Street Goes Mobile” that examines the role that mobile media is projected to play in local business marketing over the next five years. Pointing to a business and consumer environment ready to embrace mobile advertising, Borrell cites statistics indicating that a full third of website readership already accesses information via mobile devices…
Bloomspot Leads an Industry Shift
Who: Bloomspot
What: $40 million in funding and a merchant guarantee
With all the chatter about Groupon’s updated IPO filings this week, and news that Patch is offering up daily deals in 800 (not a typo) hyperlocal markets, a couple of announcements from Bloomspot didn’t get as much attention as they otherwise might. The company said that it had scored a whopping $40 million in new funding, and revealed that it is using the data it collects to guarantee that deals they do will be profitable to vendors, or Bloomspot will cover the difference from its cut. There are a couple of important takeaways from all this news…
Street Fight Daily: 08.12.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups...
An upcoming promotion with RedBox deal seems to go against Foursquare’s whole raison d’être — which is all about getting users out and about. But the new users that result will become increasingly valuable, particularly as Foursquare focuses not just on letting users share where they are now, but to suggest where they should be going. (GigaOm)…
Should investors run screaming from Groupon? Is it an overrated, hyped-up scam? Are we in the middle of another tech bubble? Well, Groupon does seem rather prone to hyperbole, perhaps because its business has proved so worthy of it in its mere months of existence. (Slate)…
How SeeClickFix Built Revenue Streams From Potholes
SeeClickFix started humbly — from potholes in New Haven, Conn. But it grew quickly as it mobilized citizens in thousands of communities around the U.S. to flag irritating and sometimes serious problems in their neighborhoods. But for all its social purpose, SeeClickFix is a for-profit company. Co-founder Ben Berkowitz talks about how SeeClickFix developed revenue from multiple sources…
Street Fight Daily: 08.11.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups...
Groupon is spending considerable money to acquire subscribers, but those subscribers are buying less Groupons. Groupon is also spending considerable money to acquire merchants but are making less revenue per merchant. That’s not good. (Yipit Blog)…
According to a new survey, it’s not location-relevant advertising that is most valued by mobile consumers; it’s mobile ads that are personalized to a users’ tastes. (Paid Content)…
Street Fight Daily: 08.10.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups…
SinglePlatform has raised another $3.25 million to launch new products. “If you want to monetize local, you will need to go through SinglePlatform one day, because they’ll own the best, trusted relationship with the merchant,” a confident venture capitalist says. (Business Insider)…
One year after the launch of TBD, the local news project barely exists. Journal Register’s Steve Buttry quietly lifts a glass to his TBD colleagues and shares some lessons for other digital pioneers from his TBD experience. (SteveButtry.com)…
Case Study: Daily Deal Pitches Overwhelm SF Restaurateur
If daily deals haven’t already reached a tipping point, then San Francisco restaurateur Joe Hargrave believes that day is coming soon. The Tacolicious owner gets between four and nine pitches from daily deal salespeople each month. He struggles to understand why businesses would want to target potential customers who are only after a good deal…
Hyperlocals: ‘Use Facebook Like the Rest of the Planet’
Facebook, with its semi-walled set-up, is where it’s at for indie hyperlocal publishers like the Valley Independent Sentinel.
We’re in a market with two of the three largest newspapers in Connecticut. The two dailies are in no way ignoring the Web. It’s their top priority, from what they keep saying. Yet we have more followers on Facebook then one of the big fellas — and we’re not too far off from the other heavy hitter.
So here are a few Facebook tips that can help independent publishers rack up the “likes”:
LocalVox Launches White-Label Local Marketing Tool
LocalVox, the local marketing platform built by hyperlocal publisher Nearsay, has launched a white-label advertorial publishing tool. The widget will allow larger hyperlocals and vertical niche publishers with existing sales and marketing teams to host and syndicate advertorial content from their clients across the LocalVox publishing network — and will help them push that content to social media outlets…
Street Fight Daily: 08.08.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups...
Groupon’s subscribers have more than doubled to 115 million so far this year, according to a person familiar with the situation. Groupon had 50.58 million subscribers at the end of 2010. That jumped 64 percent to 83.1 million at the end of the first quarter. Since then, the number of subscribers has climbed to 115 million, the person said. (Reuters)…
While it may be curious that advertisers, investors, and Foursquare’s ever-growing horde of users continue to maintain faith in the company’s fortunes, this allegiance has almost entirely to do with the enchantments of a single person: founder Dennis Crowley. (Ad Age)…
Foursquare Dominates the Week
The best or biggest deal, assertion, investment or other strategy this week. Who: Foursquare What: A revenue plan, a growth strategy and a (small) design upgrade A slew of developments came out of location-based social network Foursquare this week, just days after the company announced it would partner with Groupon to share the daily deal […]
Navigating the ‘New Ethics of Local Journalism’: Dangerous Curves Ahead
Journalistic ethics is ordinarily a head-nodding, Sunday-sermon kind of subject. Unless a community website names a teenager who died of a drug overdose in what was a string of Oxycontin fatalities among local youths…or publishes a “news” story about a business that’s a regular advertiser or is being avidly sought….or takes sides on a divisive […]
Patch Pitch: 855-Town Gorilla Doles Out Daily Deals
Patch certainly reports the news, but it also seems that often Patch is the news. This is one of those weeks. And not simply because one of their interns recently saved a pedestrian, and covered it. The hyperlocal news destination that AOL’s betting a bunch on (closing in on $200 million invested thus far) announced last week that it had crossed a milestone of one million articles published. It’s also rolling out a shiny new daily deals product in over 800 of its communities…