News and Analysis

Retailers Prepare for Increased Cyber Attacks During Prime Day

Cyber security experts are warning of increased phishing, ransomware, and social engineering attacks during Amazon’s Prime Day event this week, as more hackers take advantage of the event’s popularity to send credential harvesting emails to unsuspecting consumers. With the frequency of these attacks on the rise, multi-location retailers are beefing up their own digital security protocols and using external marketing channels to distribute warnings to their customers.

New Hires at Habu, Razorfish, and Channel Factory

The Street Fight new hires roundup features movers and shakers in adtech, martech, e-commerce, localized marketing, location intelligence, and more. This month’s roundup features new hires at Habu, Razorfish, and Channel Factory.

How Brands Can Prepare for a Federal Privacy Law

The American Data Privacy and Protection Act inched its way closer to reality earlier this month, advancing in the House and moving to the full Energy and Commerce Committee for approval. With support from both House and Senate committee leaders, it’s beginning to look like advertisers and marketers might finally be getting uniformity in privacy and data regulations across all 50 states.

Commentary

SEO Trends for 2020 That You Need to Know

In 2020, we can only expect the competition for the attention of Internet audiences to become even more intense. More and more businesses appear each day, all raring to get to the top of the search results.

Add to that the fact that search engines, Google in particular, will continue to make changes to their algorithms in the coming year. SEOs must be on their toes to stay on top of the latest SEO trends. Here are some of the changes, which include the further ascendance of video, voice, and mobile as well as premiums on longer content and possible openings for non-Google search engines.

LBMA Presents Location Weekly: One Nation, Tracked; Uber Works; Smart Home Synergy

Location Weekly Episode #445 is ready to help you keep yourselves up to date over the holidays. Starting with a discussion on the New York Times article “One Nation, Tracked,” we also discuss Uber Works launching in Miami, the team-up of Amazon, Apple, and Google to make smart homes interoperable, and Goodwill reaching 1.4M mobile devices with location data via Teemo.

Then vs. Now: 10 Years of Local Search

David Mihm and Mike Blumenthal offer their take on a decade in local search. Among other topics, they take stock of Google’s dominance.

Mike: Now, it seems that the battle to become the hegemon of local has been signed, sealed, and delivered by Google not just in the US but worldwide. Their well-played hand with Android seems to have been the push they needed. And they managed to gain a totally dominant position IN SPITE of the Google Plus fiasco, which started around that time. 

David: Google Plus! I’d honestly forgotten about that debacle already. In our little corner of the world, the fact that Google could waste all those years, person hours, and billions of dollars developing Google Plus and still ascend to its current position in local search shows you just what a colossal opportunity Facebook has missed in this space.

Latest Posts

Uberall Partners With TripAdvisor for Multilocation Reputation Management

While it has become commonplace for hotels and restaurants to check their TripAdvisor ratings on a regular basis, the process breaks down as the size of the business grows, causing brands with hundreds of locations to struggle. The digital location marketing platform Uberall is trying to change that.

Bridg Positions Itself as Marketing Arm for Offline Businesses

Many brick-and-mortar businesses struggle to track and market to their customers in a way that generates additional sales. A startup called Bridg is looking to change that by launching a platform designed to help restaurants and retailers connect with “previously invisible” customers.

Street Fight Daily: The American Version of GDPR Is Coming, Supersized Funding Rounds Becoming Common

TODAY IN LOCAL & DIGITAL MARKETING… Should Ad Tech Panic Over the California Privacy Protection Act Now or Later?… $100 Million Was Once Big Money for a Startup. Now, It’s Common… Bridg Positions Itself as Marketing Arm for Offline Businesses…

Happy Returns Expands Into College Market

Startup Happy Returns, based in Santa Monica and founded by alums from HauteLook and NordstromRack.com, offers a way for shoppers to return e-commerce purchases at real-world kiosks. Beginning this fall, Happy Returns will be setting up kiosks—which it calls “Return Bars”—at five campuses around the country to capitalize on the returns generated by back-to-college online shopping.

Survey: Identifying Best Practices in Reputation and Review Management

Multi-location brands that use reputation and review management to manage local marketing and advertising are more likely to say that their marketing efforts are effective, according to Street Fight’s latest survey. Analysis of the survey identified several related strategies that correlated strongly with marketing effectiveness, including trying to respond to every review and working with a reputation specialist with its own technology.

Street Fight Daily: Best Practices in Reputation and Review Management, Ad Tech Consolidation

TODAY IN LOCAL & DIGITAL MARKETING… Survey: Identifying Best Practices in Reputation and Review Management… As Duopoly Reigns, Ad Tech Industry Consolidates… Happy Returns Expands Into College Market…

As Local Search Enters the Voice Era, Three Content Channels Dominate

You’re well covered today on the three top voice platforms if you have strong listings on Google, Apple, and Yelp. If you want to do even more, make sure your Bing listings are up to date for Cortana (note that Yelp reviews show up here as well), and submit your listing info to Here and Foursquare in order to be found in Samsung’s Bixby interface.  

DexYP (and Other Publishers) Transition to Digital, But Limited Revenue Suggests Bleak Long-Term Prospects

“DexYP seems to be doing as many things right as one can expect from a huge Yellow Pages entity. But somehow they, and other publishers, need to transition to a more consultative higher-price point position,” David Mihm tells Mike Blumenthal in this edition of their biweekly column.

Street Fight Daily: How Businesses Can Prepare for Voice-Driven Commerce, Google Pursues OOH in Big Way

TODAY IN LOCAL & DIGITAL MARKETING… As Local Search Enters the Voice Era, Three Content Channels Dominate… Google’s Targeted Ads Are Coming to a Billboard Near You… DexYP (and Other Publishers) Transition to Digital, But Limited Revenue Suggests Bleak Long-Term Prospects…

Hires and New Openings at Dream Local, Adsquare, PubMatic

Every two or three weeks, Street Fight rounds up some of the latest hires and new openings in the hyperlocal marketing, tech, and media industries.  This week’s roundup includes hires and new openings at Gravy Analytics, GasBuddy, Swrve, Episerver, and Swrve.