Why Airbnb Is Interested in Local Search
Over the past few years, Airbnb has quietly pushed to bring the sense of authenticity implicit in apartment sharing beyond the walls of the host’s home. Street Fight recently caught up with Lenny Rachitsky, a product manager at Airbnb and previously the founder of Localmind, to talk about the role of local discovery in Airbnb’s product…
Syndicated Commerce: Bridging the Gap Between Content and Commerce
When done right, ecommerce is one of the most lucrative options for publishers challenged not just with creating compelling content, but also with generating revenue through content-based display advertising. The publishers who adapt to the trends of ecommerce will thrive and become leaders in the new economy. Those who don’t will become unsustainable and disappear…
5 Ways Hyperlocal Technology Can Save Malls from Extinction
Given their position in the marketplace, hyperlocal vendors are uniquely able to help physical stores fight back against the changing tide. By using features like geo-targeting, indoor tracking, and mobile messaging, brick-and-mortar retailers can band together and increase their chances of survival. Here are five ways that hyperlocal technology can potentially save shopping malls from extinction…
Street Fight Daily: Intuit’s Buying Spree Continues, Google Eyes Skybox
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Intuit to Buy Bill-Payment Service Check Inc. for $360 Million (Wall Street Journal)… Google Close To Snapping Up Satellite Startup Skybox Imaging For $1B+, Say Sources (TechCrunch)… Investor Talk on Uber’s Valuation Hits as High as $17 Billion (Wall Street Journal)…
Watch Out Yelp and Foursquare — Facebook Starts Flexing Its Local Muscles Again
During a presentation at Internet Week in New York on Thursday, Justin Moore, an engineering manager at Facebook, offered a full-throated pitch for the company’s local data initiatives. Moore, a former Foursquare engineer who joined Facebook in early 2012, says a team in the company’s New York office has spent the past two years turning the 32 billion pieces of location-tagged content, which have been created on the social network, into a sprawling database of places that spans the globe…
Openings and New Hires at Telmetrics, OPA, Square, and Pro.com
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. In this week’s edition, new hires and jobs at PayPal, Signpost, Search Influence, Angie’s List, LiveIntent, hibu and more …
LBMA Podcast: Indoor Location Tech at Waitrose, Motorola’s New MPact
Top stories of the week include the British Navy & quantum positioning; Freedom Telecare’s PunchPrompt; the Gap’s #summerloves campaign; Square’s shift in focus from Wallet to Order; SinglePoint & Drive Media Network; WhatsAppleBees, an anonymous social network for Applebees patrons; MonkeyParking App; and Starwood Hotels’ Google Glass App…
Street Fight Daily: Uber Eyes $12B Valuation, Facebook Adds Menus
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Uber Discusses Investment at $12 Billion Valuation (Wall Street Journal)… Facebook Lets Restaurants Post Menus to Their Pages (Mashable)… TripAdvisor Begins Using Its Own Restaurant Reservations Tool In Challenge to OpenTable and Yelp (Skift)…
Texas ‘Indie’ Pure Play Is Hog-Tying ‘Legacy’ Competitor
Tired of his four-hour commute between Dallas and San Angelo, Dallas Morning News ad salesman Joe Hyde applied to the San Angelo Standard-Times in 2009. He never heard back. Today, Hyde is the founder-publisher of San Angelo Live, an independent “pure play” that — in its eight months of existence — is already surpassing his Scripps competitor in key traffic metrics, and, since last month, operating in the black…
Consumers Are Using Cash Less — And That’s a Good Sign for Digital Marketers
A report by Javelin Research found that in-store cash sales in the U.S. dropped from $874 billion in 2012 to $788 million last year — a 10% decline. Over the next five years, the report projects that consumers will spend $100 billion less with cash, opting instead to pay using credit and debit cards as well as still-nascent mobile payment systems…
Street Fight Daily: Yelp Adds Video, Verizon Sells Mobile Ads
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Yelp Is Adding A New Video Feature To Its Reviews (BusinessInsider)… Verizon Looks to Target Its Mobile Subscribers With Ads (AdAge)… Google Plans Low-Cost, High Quality Wi-Fi Networks For Small- And Medium-Sized Businesses (TechCrunch)…
Conference Notebook: Mobile Commerce Without the Wallet
During a conversation at the M1 Summit in New York Tuesday, American Express’s CEO Kenneth Chenault attributed the recent failure of some of the most-hyped mobile payments products to a lack of focus and an inability for these services to equal the established ease of the credit card. But he remained confident that a fundamental transformation in the payments industry was still underway…
Street Fight Daily: Investors Bet on Marketplaces, Direct Response Dominates
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Local Services Marketplace Thumbtack Raises $30 Million (TechCrunch)… Direct-Response Tactics Take Majority of US Marketers’ Budgets (AdAge)… Marketers Get On Board the Offline-to-Online Data Train (AdAge)…
At Westfield Labs, Rethinking Retail One Mall at a Time
In 2012, the Westfield Group, one of the largest owners of indoor malls in the world, opened Westfield Labs, a division tasked with developing technology to improve the retail experience. Street Fight recently caught up with Nicholas Cabrera, the division’s SVP of product development, to talk about the role of technology in the physical shopping experience…
Street Fight Daily: Groupon Goes After Square, Apple’s New Retail Plan
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Groupon to Replace Nearly All of Its Merchants’ Cash Registers With iPads (Recode)… Angela Ahrendts’ Plan for the Future of Apple Retail: China Emphasis, Mobile Payments, Revamped Experience (9to5 Mac)… PubMatic Acquires Mobile Ad Server Mocean Mobile (Adage)…
Study: Rampant Data Fraud Poses a Threat to the Mobile Advertising Industry
According to a new report, roughly two-thirds of the location data which mobile publishers pass on to advertising exchanges, and eventually to marketers, is inaccurate. The report, released by Thinknear, the mobile advertising wing of Telenav, found that of the 67% of mobile advertising impressions, which include a latitude-longitude data, only a third can accurately predict the location of a user down to 100 meters…
5 Ways to Track the Effectiveness of a Hyperlocal Campaign
Sixty-four percent of businesses surveyed by Oracle in 2013 said that the ability to track marketing ROI has been the most important change in the marketing world, however the majority of local merchants still aren’t sure how to compare various hyperlocal channels and measure the effectiveness of different types of campaigns. Here are five strategies for doing just that…
Street Fight Daily: Airbnb Tests Local Experiences, Patch Turns a Corner
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Airbnb Quietly Tests Selling Tours and Other ‘Experiences’ (VentureBeat)… Patch, a Network for Hyperlocal News, Turns a Corner (Boston Globe)… PubMatic, xAd Team To Launch Location-Based Programmatic Marketplace For Mobile (MediaPost)…
Local Mobile Search in U.S. Still Outpacing Other Major Global Markets
We recently culled data from more than 13 million users of our mobile shopping platform in six countries. Not surprisingly, because of its high saturation of smartphone users, the U.S. market reports the highest percentage (60%) of all our search traffic from mobile devices. We expect that to increase as smartphone sales continue to grow…