Street Fight Daily: Facebook Hits 18M SMBs, eBay Tests Local Marketplace
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology… Second Quarter Reveals Facebook’s Big Push for Local(Wall Street Journal)… eBay Is Testing A New Local Service Provider Marketplace In The UK (MarketingLand)… Angie’s List 2nd-Quarter Loss Narrows (Bloomberg Businessweek)…
Digitas’ Leary: Brands Still Figuring Out the ‘Right Level of Local’
For brands, mobile has become more than a medium for advertising; it’s an invaluable source of customer data. Brett Leary, VP of mobile at Digitas, talked with Street Fight recently about the need to analyze location in terms of “context,” brands’ budding interest in shopper analytics, and “the right level of local.”
Centzy Brings Rich Content to the World Beyond Restaurants
Consumers are looking to the web to make decisions about nearby services, but the data is often incomplete or absent entirely. A number of companies have emerged to solve the problem, but with only 10% of business posting information online, it’s still a pain point for consumers. One of the newer plays is Centzy, a year-old startup that is looking to bring business’ pricing and store hours online via a self-built crowdsourcing platform….
Hyperlocal Industry Leaders to Gather in NYC on Oct. 24-25
Street Fight, the leading voice of the hyperlocal industry, will host its third annual Street Fight Summit in New York in October, bringing together decision makers and influencers from key areas of local marketing and commerce. Topics will focus on the most dynamic areas of hyperlocal, such as indoor targeting, mobile payments, hyperlocal advertising models, and local commerce strategies…
Street Fight Daily: Uber Looks Beyond Taxis, Foursquare Launches Self-Serve Product
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology… On-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)…
9 Strategies Merchants Can Use to Protect Their Reputations Online
It’s not uncommon for local merchants to go to the extreme to make a great first impression when customers arrive at their businesses — designing custom signage and selecting window displays with the utmost care — without giving a second thought to the first thing potential customers see when they search for their companies online. Here are strategies that merchants can use to protect their reputations and make a great first impression on the web…
Street Fight Daily: eBay To Expand Same-Day Delivery, Print Revenues Weigh on Gannett
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology…. With Amazon in Its Crosshairs, eBay to Launch Same-Day Delivery for eBay.com Purchases by Year’s End (AllThingsD)… Decline In Newspaper Advertising Weighs On Gannett Results (Reuters)… Small Businesses Shirk Advertising (AdAge)…
Winning in Local Commerce Means Solving the Data Issues in Discovery
The acceleration in the local consumer’s purchase cycle means that each layer of the the Local Stack of online-to-offline local commerce — find, buy, retrieve and engage — must fuse together and work to create a seamless local commerce experience. In the “find” layer, local search properties have expanded beyond point-of-interest data, investing in the rich content needed to help consumers make purchase decisions before leaving businesses’ sites…
6 Tools Restaurants Can Use for Better Guest Intelligence
By the time a guest walks through the front doors at Ping Pong Dim Sum in Washington D.C., marketing manager Myca Ferrer can already be fairly certain what he or she will order. Ferrer isn’t psychic, but he is using a guest intelligence platform to gain a deeper understanding of his most frequent customers. By tracking preferences and payment histories, Ping Pong Dim Sum is better able to offer VIP service to its most loyal diners…
Street Fight Daily: Apple Buys HopStop, RetailMeNot Soars In IPO
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology… Apple Buys 2 Mapping Companies (New York Times)… Coupon Site RetailMeNot’s IPO Soars 32% in First Day (Wall Street Journal)… Facebook Is Testing a Feature That Can Track Customers’ Physical Movements at Businesses (Terra)…
With Digital Video, Newspaper Companies Could Disrupt Local TV
Here’s what I think will happen. The local newspapers that are smart are already getting serious about creating video content. Some of them are beginning to figure out how to get that content to consumers via set-top boxes, and they will be the first to experiment with partnering with companies like Aereo instead of fighting them in court…
Openings & New Hires at Yellowbot, LiveIntent, Village Voice, and Groupon
Every two weeks, Search Influence’s Kelly Benish — who knows practically everyone in hyperlocal — covers some of the latest job changes taking place in this dynamic industry. Moves this edition include new execs at Punchey and Tribune, and job openings at Yelp, The Weather Channel, Google, and more…
LBMA Podcast: Apple Making Social Maps, YuMe’s Targeted Video Ads
In this week’s episode, Apple is creating a Waze of their own; France rocks biometric payments and IBM’s Smarter Cities billboards; and tracking moods through facial expressions to sell cosmetics. SolveMedia and Unilever brand the captcha. Plus special guest Krina Patel of Ingenious Med…
Privacy Hawks in Tow, Euclid Pushes Ahead With Offline Retail Analytics
Amid congressional queries and rumbles in the press over privacy concerns, Euclid is pushing ahead with its effort to bring Google Analytics to the physical world. The service, which uses wi-fi signals to provide brick-and-mortar retailers with store analytics, has released a major update, adding new metrics, industry benchmarks, and a substantial redesign to its dashboard…
How ARLNow Succeeds in a Market Packed With Competitors
“Print media types may hear ‘quality’ and think ‘in-depth, investigative reporting’ — but that’s not necessarily what I mean,” says ARLNow founder Scott Brodbeck. “At the moment, I believe that breadth is more important than depth in local. But too much or too little of each can hurt. Striking a good balance in terms of shorter and longer articles, and publishing those articles at semi-regular intervals throughout the day, encourages repeat readership.”
Case Study: Bakery Uses Mobile POS for Real-Time Business Analytics
When Tara Koenig first began researching mobile point-of-sale systems for her Virginia cupcake bakery back in 2011, her interest wasn’t driven by the lack of upfront costs or tablet integrations. It was driven by necessity. The location Koenig had chosen for her new bakery was a 500-square-foot garage with no telephone lines (a feature that’s typically necessary when installing a hardware-based POS system)…
Street Fight Daily: Yahoo Acquires Hyperlocal Ad-Tech, LivingSocial Cuts Worse Than Expected
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology… Yahoo Buys Mobile Ad Tech, Now What About Reach? (MarketingLand)… Why the LivingSocial ‘Adventures’ Cuts Are more Than Expected (Washington Business Journal)… Companies To Develop Privacy Standards For Tracking Brick-And-Mortar Shoppers (MediaPost)…
Study: Facebook Sees Growth as Local Search Source
A new study by Yext finds that consumers have started to come to Facebook to find local information. The study found that a little over 12% of respondents used Facebook to find local information, nearly twice the number for specialized-sites and a few points shy of the Yellow Pages/Local directories…
What Local Media Can Learn From the Royal Birth
Who is “royalty” in your community? It’s something news organizations big and small should know, because these are the people who make things happen — or not happen — in and around you. They are of the 1% that we speak of in the widening “us versus them” debate in our culture today. Their comings and goings can be real news, but their social activities and personal lives can also be news…