EIC Brian Farnham Leaving Patch to Explore ‘Other Startup Opportunities’

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Patch editor-in-chief Brian Farnham has announced he is leaving the AOL network of hyperlocal sites after four years on the job. A Patch spokesperson said the move was “100%” Farnham’s decision. Rachel Fishman Feddersen, who joined Patch as chief content officer in February, will now fully take over the editorial side of the operation…

How Pandora Is Winning Over Local Advertisers

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Pandora recently announced it reached 400 local advertising campaigns in 2012. The figure represents a strong start in the company’s foray into local, although clearly it’s just a beginning. Street Fight spoke recently with John Hilton, the company’s executive director of sales strategy, communication & development, about the challenges of selling Pandora to local merchants…

Localeze, Locationary Partner to Streamline Enhanced Search

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The two companies will join to help “streamline the sharing of Name, Address and Phone Number (NAP) data and enhanced business information for local search engines and businesses.” According to Localeze president Jeff Beard, his company will utilize Locationary’s Saturn platform and offer it as a local data solution for their clients…

How Patch Plans to Win the 2012 Election

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Two things drive traffic to Patch: natural disasters and elections. No one can control the former, but the latter occur on a predictable schedule, and the AOL property is aiming to capitalize on the 2012 campaigns. Street Fight spoke with Patch Elections head John Ness recently about traffic surges, keeping people coming back, and why he’s not worried about user fatigue…

Downballot Candidates Will Drive Hyperlocal Political Advertising in 2012

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Street Fight caught up with Patrick Ruffini, president of the digital campaign advertising firm Engage, to talk about the future of local election advertising, the massive waste that campaigns spend on TV ads, and why Obama keeps on winning…

Brady: If Print Is 85% of Your Revenue, You’re Terrible at Selling Digital

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Six months ago, online news guru Jim Brady (formerly of TBD and washingtonpost.com) took over as editor-in-chief at Digital First Media with the mandate of focusing the newsrooms of the company’s papers on a, well, “digital first” model. Street Fight recently caught up with Brady, to talk about what it takes to win hearts and minds of veteran journalists, and why the business side comes first…

2012 Election to Drive $9.8 Billion in Ads, Online Share Growing

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Campaigns, fueled in large part by Super PAC money, will spend a whopping $9.8 billion on political ads this year, according to Borrell Associates. That’s up from $7 billion in 2008. Online advertising, although still a small chunk of the business, will increase more than 615% between 2008 and 2012 to $160 million.

AmEx + Twitter Could Equal Huge Opportunity for Local Businesses

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American Express just taken another major step into local. The credit card company has partnered with Twitter to create a program that allows consumers to receive discounts directly applied to their accounts — all for the price of a single hashtag in a single tweet (after a quick, one-time visit to AmEx’s website to sync a card)…

Study: Tablet Search Becoming Vital to Local Business

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The 2012 Local Search Usage Study, a combined effort from from comScore, 15miles, and Localeze, found that “86% of tablet users made a purchase from their most recent tablet-based local search.” That is an impressively high number, especially combined with the fact that 64% of tablet users conduct searches on a weekly basis…

What If Rupert Murdoch Tried to Out-Patch Patch

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What if News Corporation decided to create its own version of Patch. Could the company that brings you Fox News also deliver the news from your block? And could it do the job better — and more profitably — than Patch has?

What Groupon Gets in Hyperpublic: Targeting, Merchant Data

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Not only will Hyperpublic help Groupon more accurately target deals to the right people at the right time — the company can also help provide value to the deal behemoth’s merchant partners, providing information about who is buying what at their store when. Groupon will now presumably be able to provide data to tout a deal’s effectiveness, and to point out ways to improve future offers…

The 2012 Election Goes Hyperlocal With Targeted Online Ad Buys

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Online advertising for the 2012 election is all about “addressability,” says Jordan Lieberman, managing director of Campaign Grid, which bills itself as “the online advertising platform for campaigns and causes.” Street Fight spoke with Lieberman about what kinds of online ad buys we can expect to see from the parties in the coming months…

New LocalResponse Products Give Brands Instant Access

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Social advertising platform LocalResponse launched a host of products today that are designed to help brands and other marketers to respond to consumer intent in real-time. The company released an analytics and action platform for marketers, PRO Dashboard, and took two advertising products out of beta, Direct Response and Intent Retargeting…

J-Students Go Local: Inside NYU’s East Village Hyperlocal Site

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As editor of The Local’s East Village blog, Daniel Maurer teaches his students about community reporting in the streets around their campus — letting them wet their feet online, and sometimes get picked up by the Times. The site is fully funded, but part of Maurer’s mission is also to remake the site into a viable business by bulking up restaurant coverage and other service features, setting the groundwork for ad sales, and potentially planning a neighborhood events series…

LivingSocial Sales Chief: Relationships With Merchants Are ‘Key Focus’

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Mandy Cole, the company’s SVP of sales, spoke with Street Fight recently about how LivingSocial is moving away from the classic notion of daily deals, the importance of mobile, and why developing relationships with merchants will always be the company’s top priority.

Paulding.com’s Hughes: Patch’s Plan B Should Be Franchises

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The founder of the Knight News Challenge-winning indie hyperlocal talks with Street Fight about what it’s like to compete with the local Patch, the key mistake he made, and why the future of hyperlocal may include owner-operated franchises.

Non-Profit ‘Independent’ Raises the Bar in New Haven

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In 2006, veteran reporter Paul Bass launched the New Haven Independent as a one-man outfit. Half a decade later, the Connecticut publication boasts nine full-time reporters, runs 20 stories every day, and has a partnership that sees its stories appear in the Spanish-language publication La Voz. Street Fight spoke with Bass recently about the future of the business model, how non-profit local publishers work, and why he thinks Patch was a mistake.

Gray Lady Takes the Local: Inside the NYT’s Hyperlocal Efforts

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Mary Ann Giordano, an editor who oversaw the Times’ recent forays into hyperlocal, talks with Street Fight about her new project SchoolBook, her hopes for Patch, and why the Times is in the hyperlocal game “from a distance.”