Mobile Local Monetization Is Starting to Happen — For Real This Time
Facebook’s mobile Sponsored Story is already showing boosted performance over display ads. For many others, the mobile-first principle will come from location targeting, as its congruence with the use case similarly boosts performance and thus ad rates. For that and other reasons, I’ve forecast location-based ads to lead mobile ad revenues by 2016…
Getting Location Analytics Up to Speed for the Mobile Ad Revolution
The inability to apply value to the key differentiator of mobile (location) is part of the reason why mobile CPMs are still at 20% of desktop CPMs. It’s critical that media buyers push mobile inventory sources to provide location analytics that enable them to make buying decisions based on the unique features associated with mobile…
How Mobile Is Transforming Local Marketing
By using mobile-location data and predictive analytics, advertisers can reach users with deals based upon where they work, live and socialize. If a relevant ad is delivered and the transaction can be completed in one-or-two clicks, mobile advertising will provide what local merchants are willing to pay for – real sales results…
Ex-Patch EIC: Journatic Illustrates Cost/Quality Issue in Hyperlocal
If I were to prescribe Journatic a fix for this recent ailment (beyond, you know, not faking bylines anymore), it would be to show a real investment in journalism, in all senses of that word. We get that you’re “-atic” — cost savvy and operationally slick. How bout showing everyone you can also be “Journo”, and slow down and do some meaningful work? It might be money well spent…
Why Loyalty Programs Are Broken — And How to Fix Them
The customer loyalty vertical is red-hot. Startups from Silicon Valley to Chicago are working hard to innovate in this area, and, in so doing, are revolutionizing the way brick-and-mortar businesses do business. But startups need to look beyond the simple punch-card model and expand their loyalty products to include features that will effectively influence customer behavior…
The Five Fundamentals of Deals Success for Local Media Companies
Many local media companies have not structured their daily deals programs appropriately or put the necessary resources behind them. While there is no silver bullet to guaranteed deals success, we have used our experience working with more than 400 local media companies to develop a model that breaks down the five most important factors to creating a successful deals program…
Can Tech Innovations Bring Revenue for Hyperlocal Publishers?
What innovations can help startup news sites earn money? How should hyperlocal publishers decide what technology to use? These are constant questions at the Journalism Accelerator, a website focused on crowdsourcing knowledge to help journalism find new, sustainable financial models. In a recent conversation Street Fight’s David Hirschman and CJR’s Michael Meyer talked with JA about some of these issues…
For Daily Deals Sites, It’s Evolve or Die
Today’s daily deal sites are experimenting with every variation and vertical for their offerings — they know that not only is disruption on the horizon, but their own expiration date is as well. And it won’t be a new entrant into the deals space that ends them; instead it will likely be a very familiar brand entering local advertising: Google, PayPal, Square, or one of the other numerous payment services companies…
Feet on the Street: How Hyperlocals Can Enhance Local Sales Outreach
Building a successful local sales force takes more than just placing bodies in coverage areas. To be truly effective, salespeople must create strong ties in their target community through outreach. These ties create an authenticity that is invaluable when it comes to establishing a lasting local presence…
Will eBay Be the Next Giant in Local?
It’s not just about where users are spatially, or what device they’re on. It’s a function of where they are in the proverbial purchase funnel — the increasingly convoluted path between offline and offline worlds that leads from awareness to purchase. “The boundaries between the physical and digital world have disappeared, says WHERE’s Walt Doyle, “and the purchase funnel has become a purchase pretzel.”
Should All Ad Impressions on Mobile Devices Really Count as ‘Mobile?’
For mobile advertising to reach its true potential the industry needs to start looking more closely at the nature of a mobile impression and applying more scalable and accurate ways to target users. The current one-size-fits-all approach is simply not going to work as users are increasingly cutting the cord and relying entirely on their tablets or phones…
When Big Brands Go Local, They Need to Think Social
Social networks have become increasingly relevant in the local search space for consumers. Social’s impact on local search is far from limited to searches performed on local networks, though. It’s also impacting traditional search results, rankings and relevance. Here are three local-social tactics that need to be included in every national brand’s digital strategy…
Report Identifies Elements of Hyperlocal Success in the U.K.
It is to hyperlocal media’s advantage that it remains a nascent sector which is developing quickly. Unwedded to the business models of the past, hyperlocal has the scope to experiment with different models for content, revenue and community engagement. In doing this, and hyperlocal players have as much to learn from the community development sector as they do from other media outlets…
Tribune Hands Off TribLocal to Data-Rich Journatic
Old-media Tribune Company’s decision to invest in new-media startup Journatic, and let the fast growing content production company take over operations – but not ownership – of its TribLocal hyperlocal network, isn’t just about cost-cutting. Journatic has the resources and — just as important — the vision to use data to drive editorial content, all the way down to the neighborhood level…
Prescription for Patch: Become an All-in-One SMB Marketing Solution
There is a real opportunity to offer businesses a service that bundles together as many online promotional vehicles as possible into a simple, low-cost package that makes it easy for them to communicate with their customers. If Patch decided to go this route, the company would be well-positioned to make the service work. Unlike other local start-ups, it has the resources to build this kind of integrated system…
Selling a City to Tourists Via Hyperlocal
There is an emerging opportunity for cities to subsidize hyperlocal marketing efforts through hyperlocal platforms. For example, a city agency could create a neighborhood-based promotion on top of mobile payment play LevelUp in which a visitor who shared that they say, ate lunch at a traditional tourist destination, could win a promotion to receive a free round trip train fare to a peripheral neighborhood if they ate dinner at a restaurant in the neighborhood…
Why Leveraging Location Is the Key to Success in Mobile Advertising
Both smartphone and tablet users are searching for locally relevant content at an increasing rate, so much so that mobile user experience as a whole has been affected by the need for location-based information. Mobile networks have seen a massive increase in local search traffic this year, affecting mobile advertising in a big way. Yet the vast majority of mobile advertising doesn’t grasp what it means to be truly local.