Street Fight Daily: How Instacart Is Changing Grocery, Beacon Use on the Rise

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

Instacart’s App Has Changed Grocery Stores for Good (TechCrunch)
One writer got an aisle-side view of how the company’s people and technology come together on location at Costco in San Francisco. And one thing’s clear: The San Francisco startup has changed grocery stores for good.

For Local Companies Focused on Specific Verticals, a Sharp Focus Can Be Key for Growth (Street Fight)
Bloated technology platforms designed to serve the entire SMB market have slowly been replaced with more targeted vertical plays, but industry veterans still caution that every vertical requires a unique approach.

Proximity Tech, Beacon Usage on the Rise Among Marketers (eMarketer)
Based on July 2016 research by Unacast, more than 50% of organizations connected to the retail, shopping mall, hotel and tourism, airports or sports stadium industries use some form of proximity technology in their marketing efforts.

Should Publishers Panic Over Facebook’s 98 Ad-Targeting Data Points? (Street Fight)
Tom Grubisich: Businesses are rushing to Facebook with their advertising – that’s reality. But another reality is that an international survey of users found that local news was their favorite among eight categories of news. MediaPost: Facebook to pre-load brand mobile sites

Should Citations Define the Success of SMBs’ Local SEO Strategies? (Search Engine Land)
Andrew Shotland: Citations are a foundational part of a local SEO program — if your citations are borked, it may be affecting your ability to compete in local packs. But citation work is not a competitive advantage in competitive markets. This makes sense, as pretty much every business out there should have a bunch of citations.

Oxford Study: Social Media Replaces TV as Main News Source for 18-24 (AdWeek)
The 18-24 crowd has used the internet as its primary source for news for several years. Now it is specifying “social media” as its main source of news, with that niche overtaking television for the first time. The information comes from a study done by The Oxford University Reuters Institute.

5 Common Mistakes Clients Make When Using Agencies to Build Mobile Apps (Digiday)
Luka Abrus: Over the years, I’ve seen mistakes that our clients repeat over and over again. Some have been quite frustrating, and some luckily do not have repercussions (if we don’t count the “I told you so” moments). Here are five mistakes that can have the greatest impact on a project and yet can be easily avoided.

The Decline and Fall of Retail As We Know It (The Robin Report)
Kate Newlin: The female shopper is MIA. And on a much bigger scale than ever before. Where is she? She’s happily ensconced at her computer, ordering at will, searching for companies that offer free returns, or at least free exchanges. Good news for the United States Postal Service. Bad news for conventional retail.

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