Street Fight Daily: Uber Seeks to Raise Another $1B, Is Amazon Building Its Own Shipping Network?
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology…
Uber Said to Plan Another $1 Billion in Fundraising (New York Times)
Just three months after raising an enormous sum of money from investors, Uber is at it again. The ride-hailing service is planning to raise close to $1 billion in new venture capital, looking at a valuation of $60 billion to $70 billion.
Getting Pushy with Notifications Can Pay Off with Millennials (Street Fight)
With the volume and velocity of messaging in the digital economy increasing seemingly exponentially, brands everywhere need to weigh what information and content they share, how much, and the delivery channel they use. When it comes to highly connected millennials who use location-based apps, a new study indicates brands and retailers stand a good chance of cutting through the clutter with push notifications.
Amazon May Be Building a Team That Will Help It Replace FedEx and UPS (Business Insider)
Amazon wants to cut costs by relying less on third-party shippers like UPS and FedEx, and it may be inching closer to doing that. A new report says the ecommerce giant plans to launch its own shipping network “sometime in 2016.”
#SFSNYC Recap: 5 Key Takeaways from This Year’s Summit (Street Fight)
Last week’s Street Fight Summit assembled more than 350 marketers, solutions providers, technologists, and media executives to discuss pressing issues and developments in the connected local economy. Here are five key takeaways from the day’s keynotes, panel discussions, and fireside chats.
Mobile Payments Will Triple in the U.S. in 2016 (eMarketer)
The number of people in the U.S. using their phones to pay for goods and services at the point of sale will continue to climb steadily, with 2016 being a year of significant growth for the technology. According to the latest proximity mobile payments forecast from eMarketer, the total value of mobile payment transactions will grow 210 percent in 2016.
Local Papers Unload on Viewability Bad Actors and ‘Garbage Inventory’ (Street Fight)
Ever since a 2014 Google study documented that 52 percent of ad impressions were not seen by users, viewability has been a front-burner issue. Publishers are right in the middle: The digital platforms of local newspapers serve up billions of ad impressions monthly. To find out how they’re responding, Street Fight spoke with Tobias Bennett, the Local Media Consortium’s advertising expert.
Amazon Echo Adds Yelp Local Search for Restaurants and Businesses (Mashable)
The tiny, robot-like assistant helping Amazon Echo users to shop via voice interface just got an upgrade: local search powered by Yelp. Specifically, the new feature will allow Echo users to ask for information on local businesses and restaurants and get details spoken back to them in the same way Echo delivers product and weather information.
Maryland Mom Turned Parenting into a $5 Million Daily Deals Business (Washington Post)
LivingSocial laid off 200 employees earlier this month and is pursuing a new business model. Groupon cut 1,100 jobs the month before. But a Maryland-based mom-niche deals site, CertifiKid, is motoring along, serving more than one million daily subscribers in nine cities.
Doorman, a Startup Eliminating Missed Package Deliveries, Comes to Chicago and, Soon, New York (TechCrunch)
Doorman, a company tackling the problem of missed deliveries by allowing consumers to schedule their own deliveries as late as midnight, has now gone live in Chicago and is preparing to launch in New York City. The expansion comes on the heels of Doorman’s seed funding round from earlier this summer, which saw the company adding $1.5 million to its coffers in order to grow its business.
A Moving App That Does the Heavy Lifting (New York Times)
Zootly, an app that has just been soft launched, aims to help with the arduous process of moving in New York City. It connects migratory New Yorkers with moving companies, differentiating itself from the competition by staking its reputation on the quality of the movers it lists.
Here’s What Happens When Ad Blockers, Publishers, and Agencies Get Together to Talk About You-Know-What (Adweek)
Ad blocking has been around for years, but its massive recent growth means it’s now top of mind for marketers and publishers. This roundtable gathered representatives of publishers, agencies, and makers of ad blockers to talk through the key issues.
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