Street Fight Daily: The Food Delivery Obsession, How Holiday Shopping Could Boost Beacon Tech

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

In ‘Overcrowded’ Food Delivery Market, Venture Capitalists Are Still Hungry for More (Bloomberg)
Just eight months after raising $40 million from venture capitalists, DoorDash is making another run. The San Francisco food delivery startup is in talks to raise financing at a valuation of at least $1 billion. Food delivery has become a veritable venture capital obsession; one-third of all U.S. food delivery companies in operation today raised their first round of funding in the past year. (Related: Deliveroo, an on-demand food delivery service, raises $100 million.)

Beacons to Shine a Light on Consumers’ Murky Path to Purchase (Street Fight)
Omnichannel retail activity this holiday season raises the stakes for retailers and complicates their attribution metrics. With online-to-offline shopping dynamics in focus, this may be the long-awaited breakout year for beacon technology.

This Is How Macy’s Will Target Its Facebook and Instagram Ads for the Holidays (Adweek)
Macy’s is synching up ads on Instagram and Facebook after essentially merging ad products and data to offer new targeting options. The retailer will specifically target ads at people who are engaging with Black Friday and Cyber Monday content. According to a post from the Local Search Association, Macy’s also is heavily pushing its mobile app (with location services and in-store notifications) this week.

Events: Delivering 30-50 Percent Margins for Media Companies (LinkedIn Pulse)
Nancy Lane: If you could invest in a new business unit for your media company that would deliver profit margins in the 30-50 percent range in as little as two years, would you? Assuming you answered yes, then double down on events immediately. We are urging local media companies to make events a priority starting in 2016 to offset declining revenues.

After a Year of Transition, Microsoft Execs Say, ‘We’re All In on Search’ (Search Engine Land)
In taking back selling search for Bing Ads from Yahoo, Microsoft now is the only company focused solely on selling search in the U.S. and many other markets around the world.

Inside Snapchat’s Newest Feature: Story Explorer (Los Angeles Times)
Snapchat’s immediate, location-centric “what’s happening” Stories now will be able to chronicle events from a variety of perspectives. The company has just debuted Story Explorer, a feature that allows users to see more than just one or two vantage points of a moment. Story Explorer is launching on locally viewable Stories for Los Angeles and New York before quickly expanding.

Most Digital Shoppers See Well-Targeted Ads (eMarketer)
Targeting often gets a bad rap among digital audiences, who frequently complain of invasiveness. But more than three in five U.S. digital shoppers (62 percent) believe digital ads are generally well targeted to their interests, and younger respondents are even more likely to believe that.

Classroom as Incubator: University of Florida Produces National Health Site for Young Adults (Street Fight)
Tom Grubisich: Every institution of higher learning has myriad news sources, from official newspapers to social media platforms. Some college publications have ambitions and appeal that transcend the campus boundaries. One such example is The Student Body, which emerged from a class at the University of Florida’s College of Journalism and Communications in Gainesville and now aims to reach a national audience.

Offline Search Engine Findyr Aims to Be the Postmates of Hyperlocal Data (GeoMarketing)
Findyr, a technology platform that fulfills requests for hyperlocal data, recently struck an analytics partnership in a bid to give brands better location insights. CEO Anthony Vinci says a series of similar integrations are on the horizon as the company looks to give brands better on-demand location insights.

Is Circa Back? The Mobile App Might Be Returning Via Local TV Stations (Nieman Lab)
Circa, a news app based around breaking down (and reassembling) stories into atomized chunks, shut down in June after it was unable to find a working business model. The app and its corresponding site have been dormant since then. But yesterday, some noticed the site circanews.com had been updated, and the domain name is now registered to Sinclair Broadcast Group, which owns 164 television stations in 79 U.S. markets.

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer Faces Morale Challenge (Wall Street Journal)
A crisis of morale is gripping Yahoo, as dozens of executives have left for jobs elsewhere. In January, CEO Marissa Mayer expects to complete the spinoff of shares in Alibaba, putting the focus squarely on Yahoo’s core business. Sales from that business continue to shrink. (Subscription required)

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