Street Fight Daily: Groupon Acquires LivingSocial, Businesses Use Ride-Sharing to Create Revenue
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology…
Groupon is Buying LivingSocial, Plans to Downsize Business to 15 Markets from 27 (TechCrunch)
Groupon has announced it would acquire LivingSocial, its onetime big rival that was partly owned by Amazon, for an undisclosed sum. The news comes as a quiet sidenote in Groupon’s Q3 earnings results, which beat analysts expectations on revenue of $720.5 million and earnings per share of -$0.01, but showed a continuing net loss for the company, of $35.8 million for this last quarter.
How Businesses Are Using Ridesharing Services to Bring In New Customers (Street Fight)
Consumer demand for ridesharing services has never been higher, with 40 million monthly riders spending an average of $50 on Uber alone. Now, some businesses are hoping that they can piggyback on that success by running promotions in conjunction with these very same services.
Snaplytics Debuts Snapchat Revenue Measurement Tool to Inform Brand Marketing (AdExchanger)
Snaplytics, a third-party Snapchat measurement vendor, came out of beta Wednesday after spending more than a year developing the hardware and software needed to pull marketing insights from Snapchat accounts. Snaplytics aims to serve the everyday needs of brands that may have moderate Snapchat followings but are still wandering the desert.
Foursquare’s Rosenblatt: ‘Location is the Atomic Unit of Mobile’ (Street Fight)
Foursquare has gone from check-in darling to an under-recognized data powerhouse. But in that transition, it’s more successful than ever. And its primary emphasis has remained the entire time: real-world consumer behavior. Meanwhile, the ad industry’s hunger for location data grows.
Google Voice Search Comparison Shops on Mobile, Creating Audio Ad Opportunity (MediaPost)
Google has been testing a feature on mobile that allows consumers to verbally query the item at a nearby store and have multiple results returned in audio along with prices and availability. The audio response emphasizes the impact of voice search and provides another way for Google to sell ads.
Four Main Obstacles Brands Have to Adopting Virtual Reality (Digiday)
But if marketers are mesmerized by the immersive experience they have when they put on a VR headset, they still aren’t so sure what it means for their brands just yet. We asked attendees about the top barriers preventing VR’s wider adoption by brands. Here’s what they said.
Social Ads Drive Awareness, Revenues for SMBs (eMarketer)
Social media ads are the dominant format used for both brand awareness and revenue generation among US small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), according to research. And SMBs don’t seem to differentiate much between the two goals.
Shopper Marketing in the Digital Era (GeoMarketing)
Brands and Shopper Marketing teams need digital marketing solutions that clearly drive measurable results that can be scaled into a cohesive and intelligent activation and not ad-hoc testing. So in this always-on mobile real-time era, is there still a place for Shopper Marketing?
Why Gannett’s Plan to Buy Tronc Still Makes Sense (Poynter)
With Gannett’s third quarter earnings due Thursday, there is at least a chance that its six-month bidding drama to take over Tronc will finally be resolved. The deal still makes all kinds of sense, especially for Tronc shareholders.
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