News and Analysis

Plain Sight Pivots to Help Local Businesses Drive Foot Traffic

Founded by James Chapman and backed by Quicken Loans founder Dan Gilbert, Plain Sight originally started as a way for people to explore professional connections based on location.

With local businesses closing by the thousands, Chapman says he’s envisioning the Plain Sight app as a tool for businesses to promote themselves and increase foot traffic. Businesses can use the platform to develop stronger customer loyalty by engaging with consumers directly. In addition to sharing information about how they are keeping customers safe, restaurants and other businesses can also accept free and paid reservations through the platform.

How Political Campaigns Leverage Location Data in an Era of Virtual Events

Political ad spending is expected to reach record highs this cycle, topping $6.89 billion in the 2019/2020 election period. This cycle’s spending is 63% higher than spending in the 2015/2016 season. Tapping into location data to make that advertising more relevant has taken a bit more creativity than usual.

Ad Tech and Privacy

How Much Is Your Data Worth? A New Tool Will Help You Find Out

Facebook, Google, Amazon, Twitter, Pinterest, and countless other technology giants have expanded their collection of consumer identity data, even as privacy regulations like the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and California’s Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) have gone into effect. A new tool from Killi serves as an educational resource, giving people a way to calculate the value of their personal data based on the platforms they use every day.

Killi’s new tool asks consumers to enter their email addresses and select the platforms they currently use. The tool references public quarterly revenues and daily/monthly active users, as well as data aggregators like Statista, to arrive at the value amount of each consumer’s personal data.

Commentary

5 Location-Based Tips for Brands Looking to Boost Mobile Visibility and Sales

Centralization of location data is key. With correct information at hand, a brand’s corporate office can effectively channel information to individual store/business locations for events like regional holiday sales. At the same time, stores can manipulate their own unique data and funnel that back up to corporate.

Four Years After GateHouse, Brad Dennison Has Become a Local News Rover

There’s a new nameplate in hyperlocal news publishing, and just about everything about it is boldly different, including the name—Rover. This combination digital daily and print monthly was launched in suburban Nashville last week. In this Q&A, Tom Grubisich talks with one of Rover’s architects, Brad Dennison.

Selling to Multi-Location Brands: Streaming Video Is On the Rise

Suppliers of local marketing technology and services should move streaming video up on their priorities lists and help their brand customers apply it effectively.

Latest Posts

6 Tools Brands Are Using to Stop Ads From Appearing on ‘Fake News’ Sites

Fake news isn’t just a problem for consumers. It’s a problem that brand advertisers are facing, as well, as they struggle to ensure their display ads aren’t showing up alongside inflammatory online content. Here are six examples of tools that major brands are using right now to keep their ads off of disreputable sites.

Street Culture: inMarket Retains a ‘Startup Mentality’ as It Scales Up

“Startup culture doesn’t just mean a stocked kitchen with burritos in the freezer and tons of snacks in the kitchen, or jeans in the office,” says the company’s communications VP Dave Heinzinger. “It means everyone has the ability, from the CEO on down, to roll up their sleeves and really go to work on whatever needs to be done.”

Street Fight Daily: SMBs to Ramp Up Digital Marketing, Snap Adds Ad Targeting Based on Third-Party Data

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Mobile Driving Marketing Spend Among SMBs… Snapchat to Enable Offline Purchase Ad Targeting… Marketing-Mix Modeling: A Road of Missed Opportunities for Brands…

Is It Time to Redefine ‘Local’ Marketing?

We’ve reached a pivot point where local market nuances and differences can create definable opportunity. I am not saying that the age of the big box retail or e-commerce portal are over, but if a brand does a better job at leveraging local marketing it can create a competitive advantage and differentiation point.

SeeClickFix Grows Its Base to Over One Million Problem-Flagging Citizens

SeeClickFix has used 21st-century technology to fix 2,666,448 issues (and still counting) in municipalities and other jurisdictions around the country. In this Q & A, CEO Ben Berkowitz talks about how the company he founded eight years ago has forged partnerships with 300 governments and other entities.

Street Fight Daily: Twitter Drops Buy Button, Google Privileges Its Own Products in Ads

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Twitter Unclicks Buy Button, Signaling Unclear Future for Social Commerce… Google Uses Its Search Engine to Hawk Its Products… Snapchat is Now Pitching Brands on Sequential Video Ads…

Post in the Machine: How Blockast is Taking a Shot at Local News Collection

The local news automation camp keeps graduating hopefuls. One of these is a four-year-old startup spawned from the mind of a former Microsoft-Amazon engineer who faced a very common problem: “how do I find out what’s happening outside my home right now?”

Near CEO: Bad Data Remains a Big Challenge for Location Platforms

Near enables brands and businesses to “visualize, engage and analyze audience data including their location and behavior for data-driven decisions.” Street Fight recently caught up with Near’s founder and CEO, Anil Mathews, to talk about location intelligence in 2017 and what types of new use cases we may soon see.

Street Fight Daily: DoorDash and Postmates Test Robot Delivery, Lighting Tech Helps Retailers Sharpen Location Data

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Postmates and DoorDash Test Delivery by Robot with Starship Technologies… Retailers Leverage Lighting Communication System to Sharpen Location Data… As Alexa Becomes Ubiquitous, Amazon Must Craft a Consistent User Experience…

Making Sense of Amazon’s Push Deeper Into Local

Clearly Amazon is positioning itself in the sales funnel aggressively, Mike Blumenthal tells David Mihm. “And unlike Google their presale efforts lead directly to sales that they control. ”