Yelp’s Richard: Local Will See a ‘Tendency Toward Collaboration’

Share this:

Like many other companies with location at their core, Yelp is in the process of morphing its fundamental offering into something more. The company is hoping its user reviews are just the groundwork for a more holistic service for merchants and customers alike.

Amplified Robot CEO Lays Out a Case for the Role of AR/VR in Retail

Share this:

At the LOCALCON conference in London last week, Amplified Robot CEO Steve Dann gave a keynote address on VR’s practical uses for the retail industry. VR is steadily “climbing up the slope of enlightenment,” Dann said, and it’s in our best interest to familiarize ourselves with it.”

How Time Out Plans to Strengthen Its Vertical Offerings With Ecommerce

Share this:

At last week’s LOCALCON conference in London, Time Out’s Russ Cohn, Zenchef’s Xavier Zeitoun, and FreshLime’s Bob Barnes discussed the impact of vertical approaches on local marketing. We followed up with Cohn again after the conference to learn more about how the publisher is working to become a comprehensive booking platform.

What It Takes for Legacy Media Companies to Innovate and Thrive

Share this:

As the media industry spins further away from the long-established familiarity of print models, its companies — large and small, old and new, hyperlocal and international — are hurrying to implement a plan for sustainability. Three organizations with creative solutions spoke on a panel at Street Fight’s LOCALCON in London last week about their strategies.

How Facebook Helps Small Businesses Stay Relevant on Mobile

Share this:

In a presentation at LOCALCON in London last week, Facebook’s product manager for local ads, Joe Devoy, took the stage to talk about how the company thinks about serving small businesses. The speech reflected the company’s broader strategy: build so many everyday functions into the Facebook mobile app that no one ever really has to leave it.

Street Fight Daily: YP Plans Yahoo Bid, eBay’s Craigslist Competitor Has 7M Downloads

Share this:

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… YP Plans First-Round Bid for Yahoo (Bloomberg) YP, the digital advertising business of what was formerly Yellowpages.com, plans to submit a first-round bid Monday to merge with Yahoo. YP is working with Goldman Sachs to investigate a variety of strategic alternatives, which could […]

SweetIQ CEO: Local Marketing Has Become ‘Far Too Fragmented’

Share this:

“There are too many [companies] trying to compete” in local, says Mohannad El-Barachi. He suggested that the industry needs to come up with a set of principles under which SMB owners can say: “These are my expectations and here’s what I should be getting.”

Weather Company’s Webster Touts the Power of Forecast Data in Local Marketing

Share this:

“We’re starting to have conversations about how we can take data and predict consumer behavior based on weather conditions,” says the Weather Company’s EMEA chief Ross Webster. “We’re not just looking at the weather as absolute … It’s much more about the different layers of weather data.”

Unacast Looks to Monetize Its Location Data, Hires ironSource’s Cunningham as CRO

Share this:

Beacon and proximity data company Unacast announced today that Chris Cunningham, formerly the Vice President of Revenue for ironSource, is joining the company as chief revenue officer. Cunningham will help Unacast to monetize all the data it aggregates from beacons and sensors.

On-Demand Is Tricky to Build, but ‘Very Much a Net Positive for Everybody’

Share this:

“On-demand is much harder than people think. It’s supply and demand — you have to make sure companies can grow, and that this growth can be matched,” says interim.team’s Rorie Devine. Growth in supply and growth in demand need to be in sync, which makes it “twice as hard.”

Street Fight Daily: Tim Armstrong’s AOL Goals, Square Launches New Payments Tools

Share this:

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… AOL’s Tim Armstrong Aims to Build Digital-Ad Empire at Verizon (Wall Street Journal)… Square Has a New Growth Hack to Increase Its Payment Processing Volume (Recode)… Car-Pooling Helps Uber Go the Extra Mile (New York Times)…

PlaceIQ’s Mandeep Mason on Looking at Location from an International Perspective

Share this:

PlaceIQ’s EMEA General Manager, Mandeep Mason, discusses international expansion, why this is a good time for local marketing, and why local analytics need to be part of any overall media plan.

Drawbridge CEO: ‘Programmatic Has Led the Charge for Cross-Device’

Share this:

Kamakshi Sivaramakrishnan founded programmatic ad platform Drawbridge in 2010 after a stint at Google. She spoke recently with Street Fight about Drawbridge’s solutions, the ever-changing nature of mobile targeting, and the constant misinterpretation of the word “programmatic.”

Yelp’s Head of EU Public Policy: Europe Strategy Depends on Google Antitrust Case

Share this:

Yelp has been vocal in its disapproval of Google’s handling of search results and is one of the complainants in the European Union’s antitrust lawsuit against the search giant. Street Fight recently caught up with Yelp’s head of EU public policy, Kostas Rossoglou, to talk about the case as well as the challenges faced by European companies hoping to break into local markets.

Good Uncle’s Cerilli: ‘We Could Change the Face of Franchising’

Share this:

If Wiley Cerilli’s new venture has its way, geography won’t be as limiting a factor in determining who has access to gourmet food and celebrated dishes from famous chefs. The company, which recently raised $2.2 million, will launch this fall in smaller cities and towns, linking local populations to big-city food via a mobile app and delivery service.

GrubHub’s Chia: Scale and ‘Strong Partnership Model’ Keep Company Afloat in Saturated Market

Share this:

Competition in the local delivery space has exploded in the past few years as on-demand providers rushed to connect service providers with consumers as efficiently as possible. Street Fight recently caught up with GrubHub’s SVP of Operations, Stan Chia, who says the company’s fundamental mission — restaurant discovery — hasn’t changed.

NearSt Founder: Shopping Locally Can Be Easier Than Ordering From Amazon

Share this:

The London-based startup wants to give brick-and-mortar stores the power to satisfy consumer needs as quickly as possible by offering them a platform to make their inventories searchable online — so users can search for and order specific items, and then get them right away.

Inside Facebook’s Push to Make Pages the Dominant Mobile Tool for SMBs

Share this:

Sheryl Sandberg says SMB advertising remains one of Facebook’s “biggest opportunities,” and the company plans to use its Pages product to help corner that market. Street Fight spoke recently with top Facebook execs about driving value for SMBs.

CourseHorse Co-Founder: People Are Spending Locally in Adult Education

Share this:

The company, which recently raised $4 million in Series B funding, powers a local discovery engine connecting students and classes (and taking a commission on every registration). Street Fight spoke to co-founder Nihal Parthasarathi about the various local opportunities in ed tech and adult education.

How U.K.’s Trinity Mirror Negotiates the Intersection of Journalism and Local Tech

Share this:

Trinity Mirror, the largest news publishing company in the United Kingdom, launched a hyperlocal mobile ad platform called pinpoint in 2014 that allows brands to send highly targeted campaigns to smartphone users. Street Fight recently caught up with the company’s director of new businesses, Matthew Colebourne, to talk about how business models for local journalism are evolving.