Commentary | Street Fight

Commentary

How Patch Has Quietly ‘Bootstrapped’ Itself Into 36 NYC Neighborhoods

March 15, 2018March 15, 2018 by Tom Grubisich

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Patch CEO Warren St. John tells our columnist Tom Grubisich why he decided to bet big on hyperlocal news in New York City while other local publishers were shutting down or threatening to do so, retrenching or selling out.

Commentary

SurePath Capital Breaks Down Last Year’s Money Moves in SMB Software

March 14, 2018March 12, 2018 by Mark MacLeod

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Last week, my firm SurePath Capital Partners released its annual State of SMB Software Report, which looks at fundraising and exit activity in the SMB software space in North America.

Commentary

Taking Control of the Control Group: How to Collect Reliable Data

March 14, 2018March 13, 2018 by Ran Ben-Yair

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Only when marketers account for the totality of their consumer data and account for it in an integrated way will the data actually offer visibility and control.

Commentary

Turmoil in Local TV, But Brands Still Like It and New Tech Gains Momentum

March 13, 2018March 11, 2018 by David Card

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TV remains a popular and effective local marketing tactic for multi-location brands, and there are signs that technologies for more precise targeting, media planning, and buying are finally reaching critical mass.

Commentary Street Bytes (column)

Will AMP Become a Web Standard for the World of Commerce?

March 12, 2018June 11, 2019 by David Mihm and Mike Blumenthal

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“If Google succeeds at improving AMP with Wordpress and AMP for HTML, it will still be two to three years before SMB adoption has significant impact given how slowly the SMB moves on this front,” Mike Blumenthal tells David Mihm in their biweekly column.

BUST: A Hard Landing as Soft Surroundings Files for Bankruptcy

Commentary

LBMA Podcast: Zara, Caliburger, Cab Digital Media & Telestra

March 9, 2018March 9, 2018 by Asif Khan

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This Week in Location Based Marketing is a weekly video podcast from the Location Based Marketing Association with Asif Khan, Rob Woodbridge & Aubriana Lopez. On the show: Zara deploys robots, Cab Digital Media + Telestra, Caliburger goes with facial recognition.

Commentary

How Facebook’s Big Changes Impact One Local Publisher — Some Surprising Conclusions

March 8, 2018March 8, 2018 by Tom Grubisich

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“It looks as if Facebook’s changes are only going to help New Canaanite’s visibility in the news feeds of our Facebook followers and their networks,” Michael Dinan, the site’s founder, told our columnist Tom Grubisich.

Commentary

How to Create a Seamless Online/Offline Shopping Experience

March 6, 2018March 5, 2018 by Bob Gaito

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Thanks to advances made in the digital world, in-store identification can be linked to existing digital identifiers and unlock sophisticated, real-time personalization that is seamless across channels.

Commentary

6 Guidelines for the Path to Voice Everywhere

March 5, 2018March 5, 2018 by Kal Baumwart

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I want voice (control of everything), everywhere, but I have strict requirements for how it should be designed, engineered, and implemented. Here are six requirements for a reasonable deployment of voice everywhere.

Commentary

The Cookie is (Still) Dead: Device IDs and the Future of Mobile Marketing

March 2, 2018March 2, 2018 by Brian Crook

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Some hybrid cookies-based scenarios will putter along, and some scale-hungry players will stick to old tech for a bit longer, but smart marketers are investing in customer data platforms that are mobile-first, connecting CRM directly to the mobile device.

Commentary

How Publishers Can Survive Facebook Churn: Top Expert Weighs In — Part II

March 1, 2018February 28, 2018 by Tom Grubisich

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“The smaller scale might be an advantage when it comes to trust,” Grzegorz Piechota told Tom Grubisich. “Local publishers can offer services Facebook will never be able to provide at a global scale such as checking all the facts, verifying all the ads, or providing a 100% guarantee of brand-safe context.”

Commentary

How to Turn Alternative Data into Alpha

February 28, 2018March 1, 2018 by Andries de Villiers

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The need for real-time data is critical, as it enhances the speed and accuracy of key decisions and enables investors to detect any defects before making a choice.

Commentary

Localized Insights Mean More Precise Campaigns and Better ROI

February 28, 2018March 8, 2018 by Gal Jacobi

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While creating at scale makes economic and operational sense, the danger in going with a one-size-fits-all approach is not insignificant. Evidence suggests over half of such “national” initiatives fail.

Commentary

How Publishers Can Survive Facebook Churn: Top Expert Weighs In — Part I

February 27, 2018February 28, 2018 by Tom Grubisich

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To help make sense of this sometimes-chaotic state of affairs and find solutions for local news publishers, I went to an expert who I think would be on just about any short list of Facebook demystifiers, Grzegorz Piechota.

Commentary

Momentum Builds for Third-Party Location Data; Brands See Correlation with Marketing Effectiveness

February 27, 2018February 28, 2018 by David Card

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Third-party customer location data isn’t used widely by multi-location brands, but those that use it appear to have better success with local digital marketing.

Commentary Street Bytes (column)

Unpacking the Increasingly Complex Local SERP

February 26, 2018June 11, 2019 by David Mihm and Mike Blumenthal

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“While I think [these local ad changes] might be better for many small businesses AND consumers, it gives Google a great deal of power to approve or disapprove participants,” Mike Blumenthal tells David Mihm in their biweekly column.

Commentary Streets Ahead

People Are Talking About You: The Hidden Value of User-Generated Content

February 26, 2018March 7, 2019 by Damian Rollison

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Simply put, insights gleaned from reviews can help you do business better. Though reviews may contain bias of various kinds, they are still the best source you can find of detailed feedback from real customers.

Commentary

Understanding the Proxies That Can Undermine Location Data

February 23, 2018February 23, 2018 by Rob Friedman

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For marketers, the ability to deploy technology that identifies and bypasses online users who may be masking their locations and digital traits yields improvement in the form of targeted campaigns and fewer wasted impressions.

Commentary

How Local Healthcare Providers Can Imitate Advances in Retail to Boost Efficiency

February 23, 2018February 23, 2018 by Jon Schepke

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Providers need to do, ironically, what the best retailers do: make the experience better. To that end, data management is key. Here are some steps providers can take to address patients’ need for access and control.

Commentary

Local Media Consortium Partners With IAS to Fight Web Ad Fraud

February 22, 2018February 23, 2018 by Tom Grubisich

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To fight the pervasive web fraud crisis, the Local Media Consortium, which represents more than 75 local news media companies with 1,700+ digital publications, is partnering with the global data firm Integral Ad Science (IAS), which each day measures and analyzes the quality of 500 billion media metrics.