Street Fight Daily: Postmates’ Super-Speedy Food Delivery, Apple Approves Native Ad Blocker
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology…
Postmates Takes on Uber and Sprig with Quick Food Delivery Service Pop (Recode)
Postmates is getting into the rapid food delivery game with its new service, Pop. Users will be able to order from a limited menu and receive their meals in 15 minutes, significantly faster than the typical Postmates delivery from local restaurants, which can take more than an hour.
Apple Approves an App That Blocks Ads in Native Apps (TechCrunch)
Apple has approved a new ad blocker, Been Choice, that claims to work in native mobile apps. Been Choice blocks ads in Facebook, Pinterest, Pandora, Yahoo, the New York Times, and Apple’s own News app, among others, and it blocks sponsored posts, native ads, and pre-roll videos.
Online Reviews Providing Insights That Help Brands Compete (Street Fight)
Reviews on social media have a material impact on the capital investments made by nationwide brands. The key is strength in numbers: A national brand will be more likely to have the critical mass of reviews required in order to move beyond anecdotal evidence and glean statistically significant results.
Amazon Commands Almost Half of All Product Searches, and Marketers Are Ignoring Omnichannel (VentureBeat)
Following up on research conducted in 2012, which found that 30 percent of buyers use Amazon as their first port of call when searching for products, a recent survey polled 2,000 consumers to see if their habits had changed. They have: 44 percent of buyers now bypass the whole web and head to straight to Amazon for product searches.
Report: Getting the Most out of Hyperlocal Social Media Marketing (Street Fight)
A new report from Street Fight Insights found that many local businesses don’t feel they’re getting return on their social media efforts, in spite of the fact that two-thirds of them are using social media for marketing.
Tracing Internet Actions to a Transaction Helps Overcome Mobile Attribution Hurdle (eMarketer)
Without an industry standard, companies use various methodologies to measure the return on investment in mobile marketing and media. Some focus solely on measuring the lift in foot traffic, while others concentrate on sales lift. Advertising technology provider 4INFO falls into the latter category. Company CEO Tim Jenkins and CMO Chuck Moxley spoke about how they link offline sales to ads.
UPS Offers Solution to ‘No One at Home’ (Durango Herald)
UPS is rolling out a program to 100 cities that allows people in some neighborhoods to fetch packages at nearby locations — like a pharmacy or dry cleaner — if they weren’t home to meet the initial delivery.
Apple Pay Not Yet Paying Dividends to Apple, Says Research Report (Marketing Land)
Greg Sterling: A new report says that Apple Pay has been slow to take off. While POS terminals are the gating factor surrounding in-store mobile payments, Apple Pay can be integrated into third-party apps and used to pay for things in the physical world (e.g. Uber, OpenTable). Mobile payments will see their greatest near-term uptake in the form of in-app payments.
EzCater Closes $28 million in Funding from Insight Venture Partners (Fortune)
EzCater, a Boston-based business catering platform, has closed a $28 million round of Series C funding. The company works similarly to consumer-facing food ordering platforms like GrubHub and Seamless, only for catering orders placed in advance.
Rental Car Delivery Startup Skurt Raises $1.3 Million from Upfront Ventures and Others (TechCrunch)
Skurt, a startup that delivers rental cars to renters, just raised a $1.3 million seed round. Skurt has agreements with car rental companies that have an excess inventory of cars, with partners ranging in size from local mom-and-pop shops to larger independent rental companies.
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