Street Fight Daily: Walmart Expands Grocery Delivery Program, Numbers on Amazon’s Dominance

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

Walmart to Expand Grocery Delivery from 6 to 100 Markets by Year End (Recode)
The giant brick-and-mortar retailer just announced that it is expanding its online grocery delivery service from six U.S. metro areas today to more than 100 in total by the end of the year, which should make it available to more than 40 percent of the U.S. population.

SurePath Capital Breaks Down Last Year’s Money Moves in SMB Software (Street Fight)
Mark MacLeod: Last week, my firm SurePath Capital Partners released its annual State of SMB Software Report, which looks at fundraising and exit activity in the SMB software space in North America. 

More Digital Time Spent on Amazon Than Next Nine Retailers Combined (MediaPost)
At a time when the marketing world is thinking increasingly about the value of consumer time spent with media, and the brands that are represented on it, new data released today by comScore reveals just how dominant the leader is in the digital retail category.

Taking Control of the Control Group: How to Collect Reliable Data (Street Fight)
Ran Ben-Yair: Only when marketers account for the totality of their consumer data and account for it in an integrated way will the data actually offer visibility and control.

Facebook Aiming to Launch News for Watch This Summer (Axios)
Facebook is getting ready to launch a news section for its Watch platform and it’s testing different video partnerships with roughly 10 publishers, Axios has learned. 

The Challenges Publishers Face in Monetizing Digital Content (eMarketer)
Fewer major publishers of premium digital content now believe display advertising on its own can cover the cost of producing quality content, let alone bring a profit.

As More Brands Demand Transparency, Publishers Must Answer the Call (AdExchanger)
Susan Panico: For large-scale change to be made, the entire advertising industry – brand marketers, agencies and publishers – must rally together if we’re ever going to clean up the digital supply chain.

Three-Dimensional Chess: The Messy Modernization of the Media Seller (Digiday)
Selling advertising used to be suited to the lone wolf; now, only team players need apply. That’s a function of the product being sold becoming more complicated and involving multiple parts of the media organization.

Lyft Faces Discrimination Lawsuit (TechCrunch)
Disability Rights Advocates, on behalf of the Independent Living Resource Center and two people who use wheelchairs, filed a class-action lawsuit Tuesday against Lyft. 

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