Street Fight Daily: Yahoo Signs a Search Deal with Google, MapQuest Launches Brand Refresh

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology…

Yahoo Has Signed a Deal with Google to Provide Search Ads (Business Insider)
Yahoo has signed a non-exclusive deal with Google to provide search ads for Yahoo’s search results. Under the deal, Google will provide the search ads and pay Yahoo an undisclosed percentage of the revenue from them. Yahoo previously had an exclusive arrangement with Bing, but when that deal was renegotiated in March, Yahoo was left with an opportunity to work with other companies. The deal, which started October 1 but was just revealed as part of Yahoo’s quarterly earnings results, expires at the end of 2018.

#SFSNYC: Beyond the Check-In: Big Data Analytics and the Evolution of Foursquare (Street Fight)
Dennis Crowley started Foursquare in 2009 from his kitchen with a lofty vision: Amass enough data to map out specific areas, build a location-based recommendation engine, and create navigation software. When the company introduced gaming dynamics to encourage check-ins, that’s what it became known for. But today, Foursquare’s ambitions lie well beyond the check-in.

MapQuest Wants You to Love It Again (The Next Web)
In launching a redesigned web platform, MapQuest is trying to make maps personal, contextual, and as smart as you want them to be with a new interface that is sparking a brand refresh for the company. A very basic topographical view is the boilerplate scene, which MapQuest leaves open to customization via layers. Those layers — comprised of attractions like hotels or gas stations — can be toggled on and off to provide a better understanding of your surroundings.

Local Visionary Award Winners Announced (Street Fight)
The 2015 Street Fight Summit in New York saw the presentation of the first annual Local Visionary Awards, an eight-category competition designed to honor the very best campaigns, companies, ideas, and individuals in local marketing and commerce. The Innovator of the Year award went to Yext CEO Howard Lerman.

Google Discloses More Search Data to Woo Retailers (Wall Street Journal)
Google is offering retailers an unusual peek at its lucrative search data to boost its Shopping advertising service. Google’s Alphabet unit unveiled a Shopping Insights tool that shows the products people are searching for in more than 16,000 U.S. cities and towns. The initial version covers over 5,000 products on sale through its Shopping ad service and is updated monthly. Over time, the company said it will add more products and update the data more frequently. (Subscription required)

#SFSNYC: Investor Ted Leonsis and BuzzFeed Editor-in-Chief Ben Smith on Media and the Local Economy (Street Fight)
The Street Fight Summit played host to a wide-ranging conversation between BuzzFeed editor-in-chief Ben Smith and investor Ted Leonsis. The fireside chat touched on Leonsis’s decades of local economy expertise, stemming from his many investments in and experiences with media ventures, professional sports teams, and ecommerce ventures, including Groupon.

Instant Ads Could Be Facebook’s Next Big Mobile Money-Maker (TechCrunch)
Alongside Instant Articles, Facebook now has “Instant Ads,” mobile ads which, when tapped, immediately unfold a rich media marketing experience within Facebook’s app rather than forcing people to wait for a mobile browser page to load. Instant Ads can sport animations, carousels, product catalogs, and tilt-to-view images. These data-heavy features might normally take so long to load in a browser that people would ‘x’ out before they appeared.

#SFSNYC: Button, Urgent.ly, and Pager on Whether or Not On-Demand is Really Necessary in Local Commerce (Street Fight)
Of all the changes mobile has wrought, on-demand arguably has made the biggest splash. The emergence of companies offering products and services immediately, with only a tap or two of a phone or tablet screen, is pushing incumbents to change their business models to stay on top of their industries. Three of these young-gun threats — Button, Urgent.ly, and Pager — made an appearance at the Street Fight Summit, speaking on a panel about on-demand in local commerce.

Sears Trying to Blur Lines Between Online, In-Store Shopping (Chicago Tribune)
A Sears department store probably doesn’t conjure notions of innovation, high-tech, and dote-on-you service, but the struggling retailer has been launching a series of new services over the past couple of years, including a new one to be announced today, aimed at making it easier for customers to not only shop online or in-store, but both at the same time. Sears calls its best-of-both-worlds approach “integrated retail services.” (Subscription required)

#SFSNYC: Google, Yelp, and ironSource on How the New Generation of Mobile Search Is Changing Everything (Street Fight)
Mobile has become an automatic, subconscious extension of our digital lives, and technologies that leverage the versatility of smartphones are maturing rapidly. But the apps vs. web debate continues to rage. And where does search, which has existed since the early days of the internet, fit into the picture?

Google Maps Now Lets You Add a Stop Along Your Route, Check Gas Prices (TechCrunch)
Google announced today it’s rolling out an update to its Google Maps mobile app that will allow users to add a stop along their current route. For example, you’ll be able to search for things like gas stations, grocery stores, coffee shops, and restaurants while still in navigation mode, then add them as a detour on the way to your final destination. A similar feature was previously available in the Google-owned mapping application Waze, but has been a long-requested feature among Google Maps users.

#SFSNYC: ReachLocal, ShopKeep, and Swipely on Whether or Not Vertical Approaches to Local Inevitably Become Horizontal (Street Fight)
Small businesses have a lot of options when it comes to choosing tools that keep things running smoothly. In fact, they have a lot of options even when partnering with a single vendor because companies within the connected local economy are transforming into marketing one-stop shops for advertising, point-of-sale (POS), and other solutions critical to the daily operations of SMBs.

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