CityGrid CEO: Passive Location Data Will Be ‘Transformative’ for Hyperlocal

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In May 2011, Street Fight spoke with Jay Herrati, the former CEO of CityGrid, about the fragmented nature of the local online advertising marketplace and the future of the then-exploding Groupon. Recently, we caught up with Jason Finger, Herrati’s replacement, to discuss some surprises over the past two years and the coming “verticalization” of the hyperlocal industry…

Street Fight Daily: Facebook Readies SMB Push, Foursquare’s Nascent Asset

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.As Small Businesses Become Tech Savvy, They Could Earn Big Ad Revenue For Facebook (TechCrunch)… Why Foursquare’s Growth Story Is Better Than You Think (Forbes)… Andrew Mason on How to Deal: From Founder to Ex-Groupon CEO (Fast Company)…

Street Fight Daily: Mobile-Local Video, Foursquare Readies New Ad Product

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.
Fox News and WSJ Look to Turn Video Ads Into Mobile Coupons (AdWeek)… Foursquare Planning to Offer Check-in Data to Target Ads on Other Platforms (AdAge)… With Profitable Operations And 100K Stores On Its Platform, Retail Tech Startup Erply Shifts Into High Gear (TechCrunch)…

Report: Local Mobile Ad Revenue to Hit $9 Billion by 2017

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Local mobile advertising is set to generate $9 billion in revenue by 2017, but it will take a smaller portion of total mobile ad spend than previously expected, according to a new study by BIA/Kelsey. The research firm revised its earlier estimates for local-mobile spends share from 44% to 38% of total mobile ad dollars in 2012 to account for slower than expected adoption of local strategies among national advertisers and an increase in mobile advertising as a whole.

In Lead-Up to Expansion, SinglePlatform Adds Yelp to Publisher Network

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SinglePlatform has added Yelp (and its 100 million unique users) to the network of local publishers across which the company distributes business and product information — namely, menus — from its base of local merchants. The partnership is a coup for Constant Contact, which snapped up SinglePlatform for $100 million last summer, as it looks to begin the process of introducing the product to its existing customer base over the next few months…

Study: National Brands Miss 86% of Local Feedback

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National brands miss 86% of the local consumer feedback published through social networks, according to a new study by VenueLabs, which provides local analytics for large companies. The numbers reflect the marked growth in consumer interaction with national brands at a local level, and the increasing opportunity for hyperlocal companies to build services to help enterprise access the opportunity…

Pricing Engine Pools Data to Help VSBs Spend Wisely

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With legacy local media companies starting to scale marketing services products, startups now have an increasingly viable channel to manage and distribute marketing products for very small businesses (VSBs). Pricing Engine has built a paid search and display manager that uses collective knowledge to help the smallest businesses effectively buy ads online…

Local Retail Won’t Disappear — Mobile Will Transform the In-Store Experience

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“The changes in the next five years in retail will be more profound and transformational than the last 100 years in retail have been because largely because of mobile,” said Cyriac Roeding, CEO of Shopkick. “I don’t think people will go [to stores] because they need something. I don’t even think they’ll go because they want something. I think they’ll go because they want to feel better.”

Borrell: Promotions Will Dominate Local Media Ad Spend in 2013

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Local advertisers are set to spend 81% more on promotions than media-based advertising this year, according to a new study by Borrell Associates. The report forecasts that growth in digital promotions will outpace digital advertising by 65% over the next four years, jumping from $32.2 billion in 2012 to over $80 billion in 2017…

Street Fight Daily: Pinterest Buys Livestar, Starbucks’ Shoddy Square Rollout

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.Pinterest Acquires Local Recommendation App Livestar (AllThingsD)… Starbuck’s Shoddy Square Rollout Baffles Baristas, Confuses Customers (Fast Company)… Yelp: Study Says Our SMB Advertisers Make $23K More per Year (Screenwerk)…

Conference Notebook: Location Data Takes Center Stage

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Scaling access to a small business’s customer data, and using that data to drive marketing, is quickly becoming a differentiating asset in the industry. Data should play a key role in not only defining the audience to whom a message is delivered, but in shaping the content of that message as well…

Street Fight Daily: Mobile Payments Lack Winner, Groupon’s Temp Leadership

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.Mobile Payments Still Lack Clear Winner (Media Post)… The Reward for Fixing Groupon? Not Much (Wall Street Journal)… Square’s Launch in Canada v. US: Higher Adoption Rate and Larger Transaction Size (The Next Web)…

Conference Notebook: Foursquare CRO Sees ‘Off the Charts’ Engagement With Native Ads

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In describing why Foursquare chose to build a native advertising product, the company’s chief revenue officer Steven Rosenblatt yesterday pointed to the difficulties with some mobile ad formats, like pop-ups, saying that it was really easy to screw up the mobile user’s experience with poor ad delivery. As a result, the company has instead moved ahead with its “promoted updates” native advertising product, which launched in August. Rosenblatt said that over 52% of the people who engage with ads are checking in within 24 hours…

Study: Brands’ Spend in Mobile-Local Media to Eclipse Online in 2017

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National advertisers will spend more local dollars on mobile than online media in 2017, according to a new study by BIA/Kelsey. The report projects that national spend on local-mobile media will increase six-fold over the next five years, jumping from $1 billion in 2012 to $6.4 billion five years later…

How Media Buyers Buy Hyperlocal

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In a Street Fight webinar sponsored by YP Thursday, Mitch
Bernstein, the director of client strategy at Neo@Ogilvy, and YP’s
Onil Gunawardana discussed the value of hyperlocal from a media
buyer’s perspective, highlighting its ability drive conversions in
a still-nascent mobile space and provide marketers with deeper
insights into their consumer’s path to purchase…

Why Redbeacon Founder Ethan Anderson Returned to Local

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A little over a year after selling Redbeacon to Home Depot, the company’s founder is back on the scene with a new startup, MyTime. Street Fight recently caught up with Anderson to talk about life after Redbeacon, building a local marketplace, and finding a seam in a cluttered hyperlocal space…

With New Self-Serve Product, Weather Channel Eyes SMB Spend

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Late last week the company began piloting a new self-serve interface in a move to open its advertising platform to small and medium-sized business — a new market for the company. Built on top of PaperG’s white-label interface, the product is still in its early days…

Conference Notebook: Digital Companies Look to Leverage Legacy Sales Forces

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As more legacy local media and yellow pages companies look to position themselves as a marketing agency for local businesses, reseller relationships should provide both sides of the market with solid value in the near-term…

Street Fight Daily: Groupon to Stick with Model, Retailigence Nabs $6.3M

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.Groupon CFO: No Changes to Business Model (Wall Street Journal)… Local Search Update for Google Maps iOS Could Hurt Yelp (Venture Beat)… Retailigence Bags $6.3M for Online-to-Offline Marketing (Vator News)…

Conference Notebook: Rethinking the Local ‘User Experience’

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After four years of slowed growth, local advertising spend has finally rebounded to pre-2008 levels with digital revenues up 31% in 2012. Speaking at the Local Online Advertising Conference in New York Monday, Gordon Borrell, CEO of Borrell Associates, said that local online marketing spend will reach $24.5 billion by 2016, driven largely by growth in non-advertising marketing services…