TripAdvisor Acquires Social Mapping Service CityMaps

Share this:

TripAdvisor has announced the acquisition of New York-based social mapping startup CityMaps. The company launched in 2010 as map-based aggregator of third-party data and later evolved into a navigational tool and guide for travelers. TripAdvisor spokesman said the company will continue to operate as a standalone business.

Factual’s Rob Jonas: Location Tech Still Has Some Big Problems to Solve

Share this:

Factual has been working over the past year to build out location data partnerships with a variety of agencies and brands. We recently caught up with Rob Jonas, the company’s SVP of revenue, to talk about where Factual sees local heading and why the location data space isn’t as crowded as general adtech.

Moz Targets Duplicate Listings With Revamped Dashboard for Businesses

Share this:

Multiple business listings can be a serious problem, according to Moz Local’s GM Dudley Carr: “When a business is not where it’s supposed to be or the phone isn’t answered, it has significant brand impact for the business. And typically the customer will blame the brand, and not Google or Bing or Apple for the information.”

Telmetrics CEO: A Phone Call to a Business Is Really a ‘Data Call’

Share this:

Andrew Osmak talks with us about how the company has been evolving under his leadership over the past six months, where he sees the white spaces in call and data analytics, and why a tracked phone number can be a more valuable data point than a form-fill on a website.

PlaceIQ Expands Location Data Network, Joining Oracle’s BlueKai Marketplace

Share this:

The company will make its audience targeting data available to Oracle’s brand and agency customers, allowing them to combine it with other first- and third-party data streams to build custom audiences to increase cross-channel marketing effectiveness.

Foursquare President: ‘Huge’ Industry Developing Around Location Intelligence

Share this:

As the company maps consumers’ digital actions to where they are and what they do in the real-world, it is looking to become the “Nielsen of the real-world.” Street Fight recently spoke with Foursquare president Steven Rosenblatt about the explosion of location data, and why there is a big opportunity in connecting the dots between ads and store visits.

#SFSW16 VIDEO: How On-Demand Is Changing the Way Brick-and-Mortar Businesses Compete With Ecommerce

Share this:

While ecommerce companies have doubled down on taking their chunks out of the local pie, some on-demand services are trying to find ways to use their immediacy to help brick-and-mortar businesses fight back. At Street Fight Summit West earlier this month, a panel looked at this tension between ecommerce and brick-and-mortar.

Unacast Raises $5 Million to Build Out Its Beacon Network

Share this:

CEO Thomas Walle (who will be speaking at #SFSW16 in just three weeks) says the company will use the funding to develop more partnerships to build out its network of proximity companies so that it can use the aggregate data to “index the physical world.”

Booker Acquires Frederick, Expands Marketing Automation for Service Businesses

Share this:

The two companies had an existing partnership in place, and Booker has already rolled out Frederick’s marketing services to 200 of its existing customers. Following the deal, Frederick will retain its brand and will continue integrations with other business management systems.

Swipely Rebrands as Upserve, Launches Mobile App and New Tools for Restaurants

Share this:

The company announced this morning that it is changing its name to Upserve, and is expanding its suite of products aimed at helping restaurateurs optimize their sales and service and manage their business on the fly.

Local Media Companies Tout Events for Revenue Diversification

Share this:

At that Borrell Associates event this week in New York, several speakers touted local live events — from awards shows, to beer tastings, to road races — as a potentially lucrative revenue stream with sizable margins, that local publishers could easily expand into.

Unacast Partners With Opera to Let Marketers Retarget Consumers Using Beacon Data

Share this:

The partnership potentially represents a shift from the GPS data that advertisers have previously relied upon for recent location ( which only works when users are outdoors and actively using their mobile devices) and toward more granular beacon data in profile creation and retargeting.

As Ad Blockers Proliferate, IAB’s Rothenberg Tells Local Publishers to Stick to Their Guns

Share this:

“Ad blocking represents the new normal in the media industry,” he said at Borrell’s local advertising conference in NYC. And if present trends continue, ad blocking could soon “surpass 50% on most sites.”

Closing the Loop: PlaceIQ, LiveRamp Connect TV Campaigns With Location Visits

Share this:

PlaceIQ and LiveRamp have announced the results of a new consumer behavior model that connects TV to the real world. The companies conducted a number of campaigns delivering targeted TV ads and then used location data to measure real-world store visitations, resulting in an average lift of 46 percent across three targeted verticals.

Yext Integrates Google Into PowerListings, Extends Real-Time Updates for Both SMBs and Enterprise

Share this:

Yext today announced a new integration with Google that will allow the company to offer real-time updates to all of its customers across Google’s suite of listings products. The integration eliminates manual submission, and allows all of the Yext’s customers to adjust how information is displayed on Google in real time.

Report: More Than 70% of Franchisees Use a Digital Agency

Share this:

Franchisees (and their co-op spending) represent an important segment of the local digital marketing ecosystem, and a new report reveals that these businesses are starting to accelerate their adoption of digital media and platforms, and are increasingly working with digital agencies.

Report: Beacon Use Growing, Industry on Track to Deploy Nearly 400 Million by 2020

Share this:

“The number of sensors is increasing quarter by quarter,” said Unacast co-founder and CEO Thomas Walle. “A lot of companies are still in testing and trialing, but we’re moving out of that phase and into full commercial deployments.”

Vistaprint Launches Local Listings, Providing a Broader Service for SMBs

Share this:

Vistaprint, which provides print and digital marketing products for small business owners, announced today that it is launching a presence management tool which SMBs can use to update information about their business on over 100 local directories.

Swipely CEO: We Want to Provide the Operating Platform That Restaurants Run On

Share this:

“If you’re not going to fundamentally improve the guest experience, then there’s really no motivation for either the consumer to change the way that they’re buying in the restaurant or for the merchant to replace the operating practices they have,” said Swipely CEO Angus Davis about mobile payments.

On Building Local Products With Merchants in Mind

Share this:

In local, particularly, it seems important to underscore something for new startups: to really think about and envision and understand their customer base…