Political Spending May Stem the Tide, But Legacy Media Is Losing Its Grip
Borrell Associates predicts that political spending on marketing is set to balloon in the next four years, growing from 120 billion in 2012 to well over 950 billion in 2016. The overwhelming majority of that money will still be spent traditional media — namely, television —with only a fraction spent online…
GrubHub Files For $100M IPO
Grubhub has officially thrown its hat into the I.P.O. ring, with the public filing of its prospectus Friday morning. The online ordering firm, which merged with competitor Seamless in August, filed the prospectus confidentially with the SEC last week under a new provision introduced by the JOBS act aimed at making the IPO process less expensive for smaller companies…
How Qualcomm Wants to Reinvent Retail
Qualcomm Retail Solutions works with retailers and other venue owners to put the company’s two positioning technologies, Gimbal and iZat, to use. Street Fight recently caught up with Kevin Hunter, senior director of product management for Qualcomm Retail Solutions, to talk about the explosion in retail technology, the emerging technology driving innovation, and what the introduction of mobile will mean for the existing retail landscape…
As Seamless Nears IPO, Search and Commerce Continue on Collision Course
Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported that GrubHub Seamless had made a confidential filing for an initial public offering. The move puts the food ordering giant on a collision course with Yelp and Google as the three firms look to wrangle local consumers who increasingly expect to search, compare and buy in a single keystroke…
Groupon Revenues Up, But Even Growth Disappoints the Market
Groupon reported stronger-than-expected earnings for the holiday quarter, but shares of the daily deal giant tanked in after hours trading due in part to poor first quarter guidance and concerns over declining margins. The company grew revenue by 18% from a year earlier, but it also saw double digit declines in margins decreased by as its less profitable ecommerce business continued to account for a larger portion of the wider revenue mix…
Breakfast, a Marketing Agency and Hardware Shop, Offers a Peek Into a Post-Mobile World
Last week, Fast Company named Breakfast, a small marketing agency in Brooklyn, one of the top 10 most innovative companies in local. The firm’s newest project, a digital signage system called Points, is the culmination of the company’s two-year-long effort to integrate the Internet into the physical world, and an demonstration of a wider shift in the technology and marketing communities beyond the small screens of the mobile phone into a burgeoning Internet of Things…
Looking to Woo Mobile Developers, Esri Releases New Tools
Two years after acquiring the Portland-based startup Geoloqi, Esri is putting the startup’s technology to use. The forty-five year-old mapping firm released a new geo-trigger service and a redesigned developer site this morning in an effort to build a wider developer tool kit that might serve as an alternative to the native location tools provided by Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android…
How Online Reviews and Product Information Are Fundamentally Changing Local Marketing
In a new book, “Absolute Value: What Really Influences Customers in the Age of (Nearly) Perfect Information.” Stanford professor Itamar Simonson and co-author Emanuel Rosen take a look at the impact that access to perfect information has on the way consumers make purchase decisions. The big finding is that more and more, the value of brand, and the type of awareness marketing aimed at keeping the brand top of mind, is quickly eroding…
With New API, Delivery.com Connects Content and Commerce
Delivery.com, a New York-based online ordering site, has released a new framework, or API, through which developers can allow users to order from the firm’s network of restaurants — all without leaving the confines of a website, mobile app, gaming system or Google Glass. The API helps to automate the work of a business development team, allowing the company to bring the type of integrations already available on Yelp to the cornucopia of smaller, locally-focused properties…
AOL’s Armstrong: ‘We’re Not Giving Up on Patch’
Aol’s tenure as Patch’s sole owner may be over, but Tim Armstrong, the company’s chief executive, is not giving up on the hyperlocal network just yet. During an interview on CNBC Thursday morning, Armstrong said that the company has retained a significant stake in Patch and called reports that the company “jettisoned” the struggling property to Hale Global incorrect…
In Yelp Earnings, No Sign of the ‘Mobile Gap’
Yelp posted stronger than expected earnings on Thursday, sending shares up nearly 10% in after hours trading — a fitting coda to a banner year for the firm on Wall Street. Shares of Yelp more than tripled in 2013, driven in part by rapid international expansion, a burgeoning local ad market in the U.S., and well-received strategic initiatives…
As Offline Purchase Data Comes Online, Changes in Store for Local Marketing
If exchange is the purpose of a marketplace, transaction data — information about who bought what from whom, and for how much — is its pulse. With 90% of transactions occurring offline, the growth of connected payments, and the subsequent ability for businesses and consumers to understand who’s buying what in the real-world, has deep implications not only for the local marketplace, but for the wider digital economy as well….
An Opportunity for Mobile in the Middle of the Marketing Funnel
The mobile industry has struggled to find its place in a crowded marketing landscape, sandwiched between an entrenched television industry, which controls billions in branding dollars, and a formative paid search sector that dominates the ready-to-buy consumer. But Michael Hayes, the executive in charge of turning UberMedia into a profitable business, believes that the mobile industry could find its sweet spot selling to consumers in the middle…
Local Marketing in a Post-Mobile World
An explosion in connected devices is forcing marketers to quickly move beyond mobile and address a new set of multi-device marketing challenges. We recently caught up with Sean Muzzy, chief executive North America at Neo@Ogilvy, to take his pulse on brand marketers’ interest in local, and explore how an explosion in connected devices might shape the way businesses communicate with consumers in the real-world…
How the Internet of Things Could Spawn a New Kind of Analytics
A new set of technology companies are working to help transform the way businesses understand consumer behavior in the real world. Powering these new technologies is a burgeoning web of connected devices — from smartphones and thermostats to wireless routers and traffic cameras — that constantly collect a river of information about their surroundings…
Street Fight Daily: Walmart Tests In-Store Pickup, LivingSocial’s Future
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology.… Walmart Begins Testing Online Grocery Shopping With Local Store Pickup Option In Denver (TechCrunch)… Despite Its Woes, CMO Barry Judge Sees A Future For LivingSocial (Forbes)… Google’s Newest Secret Weapon For Local Ads (Digiday)…
Placemeter CEO: How ‘Computer Vision’ Is Making Our Cities Smarter
Thanks to rapid developments in “computer vision,” a technology that uses machine learning to identify patterns in video streams, a small team of technologists at Brooklyn-based startup Placemeter have built a system that uses over 500 personal and private video cameras sited throughout Manhattan to measure everything from the crowd in Times Square to the line outside of Shake Shack…
What Obama’s 2012 Election Can Tell Us About Using Data to Build Communities
The campaign’s technology team, comprised mostly of political newcomers, used data analytics to rethink the way television ads were bought, and where its army of volunteers were sent. One of the big breakthroughs, says Carol Davidsen, was in using data to navigate the twisted world of local television, finding audiences in unsuspecting — and often far less expensive — places…
Why Ecommerce Companies Are Eyeing Brick-and-Mortar Retail
Over the past year, a string of ecommerce firms have invested in brick-and-mortar locations in an attempt to cash in on local markets that still account for over 90% of retail spending in the U.S. Manish Chandra, the founder the online fashion marketplace Poshmark, says physical locations will play an important part in ecommerce strategies moving forward…
Consolidation Watch — Where to Look for Deals in Local Tech
The first half of 2013 saw total investment activity, which includes both M&A and private financing, grow from a year earlier, as the number of deals stayed flat but total reported deal value jumped from $5.2 billion to $7.2 billion over the same period. Expect to see more deals — both large and small — in the local space as big firms search for a foothold in the industry and host of maturing startups look for the exit…