Street Fight Daily: Gannett Buys Loyalty Play, Payment Wars Heat Up
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.
Gannett Buys Mobile Consumer Rewards And Loyalty Platform, Key Ring (TechCrunch)
After the media company snapped up advertising company BLiNQ for $92 million a few weeks ago, Gannett is announcing the acquisition of Mobestream Media, maker of the Key Ring consumer rewards mobile platform. Key Ring is a mobile app that allows consumers to consolidate all of their loyalty and rewards cards and coupons into one spot.
How LevelUp Plans To Win The Wallet Wars (Fast Company)
LevelUp is less about pulling in percentages from payments and more about finding value in helping merchants connect with consumers (and save those consumers money along the way). In other words, there’s something more valuable than currency being exchanged in many transactions.
Daily Deals: Not Dead Yet (Inc.)
Though the daily deal industry is still in its relative infancy, businesses are learning which promotions work–and which don’t–and adapting their strategies to reflect these trends. While some types of retailers have shifted away from daily deal promotions, others–many of them in unlikely categories, like medical or dental services–have stepped in to fill the void of retailers that have left.
MasterCard Buys Loyalty Rewards And Personalized Offers Company Truaxis (Formerly BillShrink) (TechCrunch)
MasterCard has acquired Truaxis, a loyalty and rewards startup that uses transaction datasets to enhance relationships between financial institutions, businesses, merchants and their customers. The company offers geo-location features, monthly bill analysis, merchant-level spend summaries, social benchmarking and other personalization services.
LivingSocial Smashes Daily Deals Record With Starbucks Offer (Mashable)
LivingSocial‘s offer for 50% off a $10 Starbucks virtual gift card is the best-selling daily deal of all time, according to a LivingSocial spokesperson, who cited a top-10 chart released by daily deals aggregator Yipit. The offer, which ran Wednesday, was sold out by 11 p.m. ET with one and half million gift cards were sold.
So who is winning in the mobile ad business? (GigaOm)
Mobile advertising formats might be a holdovers from the traditional web and annoying, but no one seems to care. The mobile ad-business in the US will continue to grow at a rapid speed and will become a $6.62 billion business by 2012. Of course, Google dominates.
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