Street Fight Daily: Oracle Poised To Buy Micros, Ad Spending Jumps In Q1
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology
Oracle Poised to Seal $5 Billion Deal for Micros Systems (Wall Street Journal)
Oracle is poised to seal a deal to buy Micros for about $5 billion, according to a person familiar with the matter. The takeover, which would value the Columbia, Md., company at more than $67 a share, is expected to be announced this morning, if it doesn’t fall apart at the last minute or get delayed, the person said.
No, the Amazon Smartphone Isn’t Going to Kill Retail (Street Fight)
Mike McMurray: The in-store experience provides tremendous benefits to shoppers, and the Amazon Fire phone further illustrates the opportunity to use innovative mobile solutions to improve and influence the shopping experience.
Ad Spending Jumps in First Quarter, Fueled by Olympics and Early Political Ads (AdAge)
Ad spending in U.S. measured media in the first quarter of the year rose 5.7% from the quarter a year earlier to almost $34.9 billion. The first quarter last year saw spending slip 0.1%, but 2014 had the benefit of the Sochi Winter Olympics to fuel gains, along with higher spending for the NFL playoffs and Super Bowl.
LION-Borrell Revenue Survey Unravels (Street Fight)
Tom Grubisich: A revenue benchmarking partnership between the Local Independent Online News publishers association and Borrell Associates is coming apart because too few of LION’s publishers want to share their information with the the local media research company.
Uber Plays Hardball With Early Shareholders (Fortune)
Dan Primack: Fortune has learned some early Uber shareholders did sell stock back to the company earlier this year, including at least one which works out to a valuation just south of $4 billion. Even if Uber had not yet gotten term sheets for the $18 billion valuation, it certainly knew that the next financing would be at a significant step-up.
Is ‘Efficiency’ at Odds with Your Local Salesforce? (Street Fight)
Andy Vogel: With the economy on the uptick, businesses in local should have more wiggle-room in how they choose to increase efficiency. Whereas fear may have motivated them to move towards labor cuts in the past, now they should feel the freedom to invest in long-term solutions.
A User-First Approach to Location-Tracking (TheNextWeb)
Punchkick strategists Chris Losacco, Billy Collins and Dan Cortes discussed five non-negotiable tactics mobile marketers should put into practice to help users feel comfortable and build long-term relationships founded on true app loyalty.
InfoScout Rakes in Another $16M as CPG Brands Seek Data Gold from Mobile Apps (AdAge)
InfoScout, a shopper-research firm fueled by mobile shopping apps has closed a $16 million Series B funding round. Now CPG brands are investing in new technologies that circumvent the sellers and go straight to consumers for data on who’s buying what and where.
Foursquare Boasts National Brands – What About SMBs? (MediaPost)
Still, the bulk of ad revenue comes from national brands like Old Navy and H&M targeting ads locally. But for a company like Foursquare that wants to take on Yelp more directly in local search, SMBs would appear to be the sweet spot for driving ad growth.
A New Anonymous Social Network Where Your Location Is Not Part of the Secret (Yahoo)
Slight is an anonymous social app, just like Whisper and Yik Yak, ostensibly pushing back against Facebook’s insistence on linking a username with a face. Instead of helping us talk to people wherever they are, its ambition is to give us new ways to communicate with people in our immediate, physical vicinity.
Hyperlocal Data: Programmatic Game-Changer, And Not Just For Mobile (MediaPost)
Dean Vegilante: So much of the hyper-local storyline to date has focused on mobile due to the nature of device mobility. But that’s only one example of how this data can be leveraged. It’s entirely possible to target on a hyper-local level in traditional ways, and it’s these executions that will make hyper-local a pillar of online advertising in the near future.
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