Street Fight Daily: Groupon Puts Itself on the Market, Google Demoting All Slow Sites
TODAY’S BIG NEWS IN LOCAL
Groupon Reportedly Puts Itself on the Market (Street Fight)
Groupon, the early pioneer in local deals that was once valued at as much as $16 billion, is on an avid hunt for a buyer, Recode reported this weekend. Executives and banking representatives at Groupon have reportedly been pursuing potential targets.
Google Speed Update Is Now Being Released to All Users (Search Engine Land)
Slow websites should speed up their load times now or face SERP extinction. Google updated a blog post on its intentions to downgrade slow sites today, announcing that the change is now in effect for everyone.
Some of London’s Top Retailers Call for a Sales Tax on ‘Largely Online’ Rivals (Street Fight)
Think “largely online” means Amazon? You’re right. London’s local brick-and-mortars are tired of Amazon getting a sales tax pass while they get hit with property-based taxes. The move mirrors legal movements on the Western side of the Atlantic.
TVadSync and Unacast Partner for Cross-Platform TV/Digital Attribution (Street Fight)
Breaking just this morning, the news of this partnership means advertisers looking to measure TV and digital can now have their cake and eat it, too. TVadSync is betting that Unacast’s attribution solution can reverse the current downturn in TV advertising.
SMB Index Declines Slightly Over the Course of a Volatile June (Street Fight)
It’s not looking so hot for all the local stocks out there. June was a rough month for companies catering to SMBs, though Web.com, Square, and others bucked the trend.
MISHAPS AMONG THE MIGHTY
Facebook Axed a Post on This Founding U.S. Document Last Week (Street Fight)
The anniversary of its home country’s birth was not without incident for Facebook, which attracted attention for automatically striking down a post, flagged as hate speech, containing the words of the Declaration of Independence.
Google Faces Heat After Automated Threat to Shut Down a Cloud Client’s Project (Street Fight)
This weekend’s tech giant in hot water? Google, whose abuse-prevention system apparently shut down and threatened to delete a Cloud client’s project in three days due to perceived misdoing on the client’s part.
NEWS FROM THE NEWS ORGS
The NYT Mostly Skips Ad Agencies With 20-Person In-House Ad Buying Team (Digiday)
Like other marketers taking their media in-house, The Times wanted to gain control over an increasingly cloudy process of digital media buying, which has been plagued by murky analytics; ads showing up next to offensive or unsuitable content; and fraud.
Twitter’s Efforts to Suspend Fake Accounts Have Doubled Since Last Year (TechCrunch)
Bots, your days of tweeting politically divisive nonsense might be numbered. The Washington Post reported Friday that in the last few months Twitter has aggressively suspended accounts in an effort to stem the spread of disinformation running rampant on its platform.
SMART SPEAKERS & SALES
Sonos’ Future Depends on Not Getting Squashed by Apple or Amazon (Quartz)
Smart-speaker company Sonos isn’t letting its dependence on other distributors—or profitability—stand in the way of going public.
Who Will Buy LiveRamp? A List of Favorites and Dark Horses (AdExchanger)
When IPG acquired Acxiom’s managed services group, Marketing Solutions (AMS), for $2.3 billion last week, it marked the end of a five-months-long strategic review of the business—and the start of the next big sales review process with LiveRamp.
