Street Fight Daily: Brands Wise Up About Location Tech, Google’s Exchange Bidding Exits Beta

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

How Brands Are Getting More Sophisticated at Using Location Data (AdWeek)
Location data is powering ad targeting, customer insights, user engagement and campaign measurement and has established equal footing with traditional assets like purchase histories, digital interactions, and email response rates.

Openings and New Hires at Spectrio, Apple, GroundTruth (Street Fight)
Hires and new openings are also popping up at Google, Dropbox, and Factual.

Google’s Answer to Header Bidding Is Now Generally Available (AdExchanger)
Google header-bidding solution Exchange Bidding has exited beta and is generally available to all publishers who use Doubleclick for Publishers (DFP), the company said Wednesday.

Raise Report: Salesloft, Nift, Intercom Score New Funding (Street Fight)
Every two or three weeks, we round up some of the biggest fundraises taking place in hyperlocal marketing, commerce, and tech. This week’s edition includes funding for Fastdata.io, Kloudless, Instacart, and Neighbor.

Instacart Raises Another $150 Million (TechCrunch)
The additional funding comes shortly after Amazon, owner of Whole Foods, announced free two-hour delivery of natural and organic products from Whole Foods via Prime Now.

Facebook’s Sandberg Reassures Advertisers After Pause by a ‘Few’ (Bloomberg)
Sheryl Sandberg outlined the ways she’s responding to a data-privacy crisis, saying for the first time that some advertisers have curtailed spending and acknowledging her team has a long way to go to reassure wary customers.

Local TV Is Doing Way Better Than You’d Think, New Report Indicates (Nieman Lab)
“No other existing news medium appears to have more advantages right now than local TV news,” write the authors of the big five-part Knight Foundation report, which was released Thursday morning.

Hey Alexa, Can You Help Amazon Get Into the Payment Business? (WSJ)
Amazon is considering whether to use its Alexa virtual assistant to start a person-to-person payments feature, a move that would push the retailing giant into new competition with PayPal Holdings Inc.’s Venmo and big banks’ payments efforts, according to people familiar with its strategy. MediaPost: Alexa, Siri draw a crowd for NPR.

LBMA Podcast: Life360 buys PathSense, Facebook’s AR camera (Street Fight)
Also on the show: MyPark app, Josera campaing, Phoenix Contract + Favendo, eBay’s new AR tool, Shazam teams up with Glenlivet.