Street Fight Daily: Voice Assistant Sales to Skyrocket, Alibaba Local Commerce App Raises $1.1 Billion
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology…
25 Million More Voice Assistants Coming This Year; Google, Amazon Dominate (MediaPost)
Last year, 7 million voice-first devices, most notably Amazon Echo and Google Home, hit the market. This year, 25 million devices will be shipped, bringing the total number of voice-first devices to 33 million in circulation, based on a new study by VoiceLabs.
Why 2017 Will Be the Year of the ‘Micro Moment’ (Street Fight)
Florian Huebner: A micro moment is the point at which a consumer searches for nearby information, for things to do, buy, or learn in real-time. Essentially, it’s a description of a new consumer mindset: one that has switched from regularity to spontaneity in shopping and learning habits, due to ubiquity of smartphones.
Alibaba’s Local Commerce Platform, Koubei, Raises $1.1 Billion (TechCrunch)
Koubei, an Alibaba affiliate company focused on enabling local commerce, closed a $1.1 billion financing round this month. The funding was led by Silver Lake, CDH Investments, Yunfeng Capital and Primavera Capital, Alibaba said.
Case Study: Restaurant Group Uses Spend Data to Analyze Customer Base (Street Fight)
For Good Food Guys, a restaurant group that owns and operates fast casual restaurant concepts in the Bay Area and Los Angeles, digital marketing platforms helped bring in customers over the holiday season who were already out doing their shopping, while also rewarding those who visit most frequently.
Crate and Barrel COO Talks Bucking Brick-and-Mortar Trends (eMarketer)
With the post-holiday drumbeat of major brick-and-mortar retailers reporting declining comparable store sales and Amazon opening more physical stores, the brick-and-mortar sector’s survival will depend in large part on how it hones its omnichannel strategy.
AOL Announces Self-Serve Mobile Ad Sales Platform (VentureBeat)
The One by AOL: Mobile platform originally launched in 2016, and now the programmatic mobile supply-side platform has self-serve capabilities. That means mobile app developers and publishers can monetize their content by plugging their content into the platform.
Case Study: Increasing Customer Loyalty with Social CRM (Forrester)
With the help of a digital agency specializing in social CRM solutions, Max Factor launched a new social CRM to replace its old CRM system and a new loyalty program that is clear and consistent across channels in July 2016.
Yahoo is Pushing Back Its Sale to Verizon Until Second Quarter (AdWeek)
Yahoo says its sale to Verizon is still happening, but it’s going to take longer than expected. In its fourth quarter earnings report, the ailing company said it will be acquired by the telecoms giant in the second quarter instead of in the first quarter as previously projected.
How Bloomberg Is Fighting to Reclaim Homepage Traffic (Digiday)
Publishers are struggling with the decline in home page traffic. Bloomberg Media thinks it has found a remedy: When it relaunched its technology vertical, Bloomberg ditched the infinite scroll at the end of articles and started sending people to the vertical’s homepage.
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