News and Analysis

Innovation Brief: Facebook, Twitter & Tinder

On a semi-weekly basis, Street Fight’s Innovation Brief series aggregates and analyzes happenings from across the technology and media spheres. This week, we look at Facebook’s e-commerce play, Twitter Ticketed Spaces, and Tinder’s latest integrations. 

Contextual Ads Power Sophisticated Content Strategies in Privacy Era

As the advertising industry turns back toward contextual, marketers will find a much more advanced technology than the one they may equate with the term. The privacy-safe ad method isn’t just serving up sneaker ads anymore; it’s powering sophisticated, content-based brand campaigns across multiple channels and target audiences.

Scorpion Expands Its Toolbox with Yelp Partnership

The digital marketing services provider Scorpion announced a new partnership with Yelp this morning, in a move that demonstrates just how important Yelp’s advertising platform has become to the local ecosystem. Scorpion clients will have access to Yelp tools like zip code targeting, campaign goals, negative keywords, and other pilot programs that take a granular and customized approach to ad delivery. They will also be able to optimize their Yelp presence and unlock new profile optimizations that weren’t previously available.

Commentary

Superbowl Ad Roundup: The Local Edition

Several Superbowl ads touched on key themes in local such as multi-location brand advertisers (Burger King) and locally relevant technology like voice search (Amazon Alexa). And of course, there were lots of car commercials—an inherently local product category given the offline shopping component. 

Why Ad Tech Needs to Shift Toward a Managed-Service Model

Alexandra Theriault: The expense of in-housing and the programmatic talent shortage are long-term issues. Currently, in-housing runs contrary to the general trend of reliance on outsourcing and on-demand technologies (like SAAS) that allow businesses to focus on their core competencies instead of wasting resources on peripheral concerns. That’s why, although it might seem like the market is going to a self-service model, for many marketers it’s not the most practical or efficient option.

LBMA Vidcast: Urgent.ly Gets $21M, Adobe to Measure OOH

On this week’s Location-Based Marketing Association podcast: Urgent.ly gets $21M, AisleLabs adds payments, Ahold Delhaize deploys 500 robots, TomTom sells telematics for $1B, Adobe to measure OOH, Walgreens tailors ads on coolers.

Latest Posts

Street Fight Daily: Verizon Offers Rewards for User Data, LinkedIn Sharpens AdTech Strategy

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Verizon Wants to Build an Advertising Juggernaut. It Needs Consumer Data First… LinkedIn Bolsters AdTech Game, Launches Audience Network… WhatsApp Tools and Features for Businesses Are Coming…

Foursquare Data Shows Up Today in More Places Than You’d Think

It’s remarkable to see how often Foursquare data is popping up today in the apps that garner the most consumer traffic and press attention. These votes of confidence would seem to solidify Foursquare’s position as the forefather of natively digital location data.

6 Mobile Customer Service Platforms for Retailers

Tech vendors are stepping in with mobile solutions designed to expand the ways store associates interact with customers. These solutions allow employees to do everything from checking inventory and processing transactions on smartphones to accessing real-time information about current promotions and customer purchase histories.

Street Fight Daily: Online Brands Go Brick-and-Mortar, Voice-Assistant Arms Race Escalates

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Why E-Commerce Brands Are Opening Brick-and-Mortar Stores… Amazon and Apple Escalate Battle of Virtual Assistants… Tech Companies, Led by Amazon, Spend More Than Any Other U.S. Companies on R&D…

GTCR Acquires Majority Stake in Simpli.fi

GTCR, a Chicago-based private equity firm, has acquired a majority stake in Simpli.fi, a programmatic advertising platform that helps brands master local marketing at scale. The Simpli.fi management team, headed up by co-founders Frost Prioleau and Paul Harrison, will remain in charge of the company’s operations.

At Liftoff, a Classic Formula for Company Culture

It’s never too early to be intentional about establishing and promoting the key values you want your team to emulate, says Liftoff’s CEO Mark Ellis. It provides a set of criteria against which to assess candidates from a cultural fit perspective, as well as a rationale for promoting certain employee behaviors and discouraging others.

LBMA Podcast: InfoBeamer, Baidu, RetailMeNot

This Week in Location Based Marketing is a weekly video podcast from the Location Based Marketing Association with Asif Khan and Aubriana Lopez. On the show: Neon AR, Toyota’s Safe & Sound, Chase #SapphireOn.

Street Fight Daily: Postmates Sheds Employees, What Oath CEO Learned from Leading Patch

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Postmates Laid Off All Its Cities Managers This Week… What Oath CEO Tim Armstrong Learned from Patch’s Struggles… Amazon Pumps Resources into Alexa to Maintain Dominance as Competition Heats Up…

Drawbridge Partnership Brings Identity Graph to Latin American Market

Latin America has become a hot spot for mobile advertising, with forecasters predicting that ad spending in the region will grow at a faster rate than anywhere else in the world through 2019. Today, the cross-device identity firm Drawbridge is expanding into the market in a big way.

Case Study: How an Unusual, Soft-Sell Sponsored Post Turned Readers Into Customers

“I tried to think about everything I hated about sponsored posts and do the opposite,” says Aaron Seyedian, the founder of Well Paid Maids. “As a reader, I find that sponsored posts on blogs are often lengthy, impersonal and overly centered on sales. I set out to write a post that would be succinct and personal.”