News and Analysis
SMBs Face Long Road to Recovery in 2021
Sixty-eight percent of SMBs say they are still experiencing a negative impact from the pandemic, and the percentage of business owners experiencing “significant” impact jumped 7% to 50% from June to November.
Businesses that thought the crisis was heading in the right direction back in October are feeling differently today as they see holiday sales figures begin to roll out, and they’re scrambling to find tools, strategies, and other lifelines to help them get by.
Do Targeted Digital Ads and Privacy Mix?
Concerns about privacy are pervasive in predictions about digital advertising in 2021. The demise of third-party cookies, the passage of a more stringent California state privacy law, and the specter of future legislation in other states or at the national level are driving the topic’s popularity.
I checked in with Philip Smolin, Chief Strategy Officer at ad platform Amobee, to get his take on if and how advertisers can adapt to rising privacy standards while maintaining sustainable business models.
Why More Brands Are Asking for Local Search Data
Google search ad traffic has dropped across all devices, with mobile taking the biggest hit. Mobile traffic has been down an average of 24% since the pandemic began in February. Brands have been adjusting their digital strategies to account for the shift, including changing up their search ads with enhanced location targeting and more relevant keywords.
But achieving that high level of optimization requires a type of local search data that isn’t easily accessible through Google alone. That’s created a hole in the marketplace that the intelligence platform Adthena is looking to fill.
Commentary
Facebook Takes a Stab at Local—Again
“As it stands, Facebook’s latest local effort is of academic interest but hardly seems a reason for businesses to actively re-engage with the free side of the social giant’s features. From a competitive viewpoint, it hardly seems the stuff of legend needed to take on the current local search hegemon, Google,” Mike Blumenthal tells David Mihm in their latest biweekly column.
Newly Launched Block Club Chicago (Out of DNAinfo) Goes a ‘Bit Old School’
Last November, discount-stock-brokerage billionaire Joe Ricketts summarily shut down his DNAinfo operations in the Windy City and New York. But in a fast-paced reinvention, the DNAinfo/Chicago team has Kickstarted its way back onto the streets and into the neighborhoods with the June launch of Block Club Chicago.
Latest Posts
Report: Beacons Making Sizable Impact on Retail
The Proximity.Directory Q1 2017 Report shows that 75% of retailers in the U.S. are integrating proximity technologies into their marketing mix to increase operating profit. By using beacon technology, retailers can improve their position and increase operating profit by nearly 9% with an ROI of 175%, according to the report.
Street Fight Daily: Snap Launches New Ad Buying Tools, Facebook’s Mobile Bump Evens Out
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Snapchat Is Opening Itself Up to Advertisers of All Sizes with New Buying Tools… Facebook’s Days of Easy Growth from the Shift to Mobile May Be Over… Consumers Can Stomach Ads in News Feeds, Research Shows…
If the Gym Fits, Reserve It — Startup Makes It Easy to Never Miss a Workout
A bloom of new companies are aggregating gyms and offering single subscriptions to all of them with one “membership.” FitReserve saw the simplicity and convenience in such a program back in 2015 when three co-founders launched to fill what CEO and co-founder Megan Smyth calls a void in the market.
Street Fight Daily: Retailers Test Personalization, Facebook Drives Biz Engagement with Messenger
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… The Tipping Point: Teens Spend More Time on Mobile than Desktop… mParticle Launches Peer-to-Peer Audience Sharing to Make Marketing with Partners Easier… eBay Incorporates Machine Learning to Overhaul Email Marketing Platform…
How Harman Takes Electronics Marketing to the Local Level
Having the customer’s ear is literally what Harman International wants, but getting their attention at the local level takes more than a few steps for a consumer electronics maker. Shobhit Kapoor, Harman’s vice president of global brand marketing, caught up with Street Fight recently to talk about how the company thinks about connecting with local consumers.
Street Culture: Pointy Focusing on People and Product, Not Process
Dublin-based digital search platform startup Pointy is still at that point where the culture is just what it is, without special definitions or structure. “The number of people on our team now is small, almost painfully small,” says co-founder Mark Cummins. “There’s not a lot of structure. Well, there is structure, but there’s not a lot of process around it.”
Street Fight Daily: Angie’s List Acquired by HomeAdvisor, News Orgs Experiment with Amazon Echo
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Angie’s List Acquired by IAC’s HomeAdvisor in Deal Valued at More than $500 Million… NPR, the AP, and Local Newspapers Are Experimenting with Amazon Echo… Google is Testing a Job-Search Feature that Could Rival LinkedIn — And Facebook…
Constructing the Enterprise Priority List for Local Search
“I think some local managers in corporations are getting pushback as to why their local traffic is falling, and if it is why should they maintain local pages? What is hard to explain is that those pages DO feed Google,” Mike Blumenthal tells David Mihm. “But these locations need to be not just well structured, but easily found and crawled by Google, not hidden behind some opaque code.”
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Beyond Search: AI Visibility the New Growth Lever for MULO Brands