News and Analysis

By Unlocking Vehicle Data, Car Rental Companies Help Build Smarter Cities

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As operator of three of the most recognized brands in the industry — Avis, Budget and Zipcar — Avis Budget Group represents a mobility ecosystem of more than 11,000 locations in approximately 180 countries. The company recently partnered with the connected-car data firm Otonomo to manage its connected cars on Otonomo’s automotive data services platform. Otonomo will help ABG derive insights from its large connected vehicle fleet, including anonymizing, standardizing, and delivering data from Toyota, Ford, Peugeot and GM vehicles.

The deal between ABG and Otonomo is expected to generate more than 4 billion road miles of data this year, and 7 billion road miles of data by 2020, with much of that data being used for predictive maintenance, smart city planning, and streamlining of the rental process.

5 Business Models for On-Demand Delivery

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In the on-demand food delivery vertical alone, revenue is expected to reach $94 billion this year. Other verticals, like beauty, parking, health, shipping, and marijuana, are seeing significant gains, as well. Although the space is maturing, investors are still seeing great growth opportunities. Any number of on-demand delivery startups has the potential to take over the space if it continues to grow as its current pace.

To understand where that growth might occur, we need to take a step back and examine which business models are proving most successful in the on-demand delivery space and how startups are implementing those business models for financial gain.

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How Retailers Are Reaching Back-to-School Shoppers

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It’s that time of the year. As summertime comes to an end, parents around the country have started filling up shopping carts with pencils, notebooks, and binders. Families in the U.S. are expected to spend an average of $696 on back-to-school supplies this year, the highest amount ever recorded by the National Retail Federation.

Back-to-school shopping has become an important event for retailers like Target, Walmart, and Office Depot. While ecommerce is king at other times of the year, parents shopping for their kids’ back-to-school supplies are just as likely to shop in-store as they are online.

Commentary

The Current State of Google Maps — Fake News, Fake Reviews

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“It’s incredible to me that given all of Google’s focus on new local products that they are still getting some of the basics wrong,” Mike Blumenthal tells David Mihm. “People who rely on Google more and more to find local businesses need to know that the fundamental metric of the business quality, reviews, is fair and well policed.”

The Evolution of Location-Based Targeting

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The technical methodologies and approaches for answering the question of where a device is (or what the user is doing) are not all created equal, and it’s worth taking a look at the different methodologies and how they are evolving.

Report: Most Local Merchants Will Increase Marketing and Shift Budgets to Digital this Year

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The majority of local businesses are increasing their spending on advertising and marketing this year, and they’re shifting their dollars towards a broad variety of digital tactics. Those are two of the key findings from Street Fight’s just-released study, The Local Merchant Report 2017. Our analysis also revealed a pattern of momentum spending that makes a […]

Latest Posts

Street Fight Daily: Microsoft Building Its Own Bot, UberMedia Expanding Attribution Business

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Walmart Outperforms Estimates, but Online Retail Lags… Looking for a Sustainable Business Model for a Regional Newspaper? Start at the Star Tribune… Microsoft is Building Its Own Bot to Rival Google Assistant and Viv…

Swirl Looks to Close the Digital Divide Between E-Commerce and Physical Stores

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Pushing back against a shifting tide and changing consumer behavior won’t be easy, but executives at in-store digital marketing technology provider Swirl believe they can change the way consumers shop. Hilmi Ozguc, Swirl’s CEO, says the key will be arming physical retailers with the same datasets as e-commerce giants.

Pasadena Now: 20 Articles Daily and 75 Advertisers — But Big Challenges As Well

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“We built an online community newspaper the old-fashioned way — with daily deadlines, plenty of shoe leather and a grueling schedule of personally attending dozens of community events every month,” publisher James Macpherson says about his 12-year-old local news site.

Street Fight Daily: Google Debuts Assistant, Investors Losing Interest in Delivery

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Meet Google Assistant: A New Search Platform, Rather Than A Gadget or an App… Swirl Looks to Close the Digital Divide Between E-Commerce and Physical Stores

ClipCall Uses Mobile and Video to Help Consumers Connect With Home Service Providers

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Lots of companies have taken a whack at the local home services space — from Angie’s List to a raft of startups. ClipCall, which came out of beta in January and will present t Street Fight summit West on June 7th, relies on customers using the company’s app to record video of a job they need doing and then sends that video out to nearby experts.

How True Religion Uses Wearables to Elevate the Shopping Experience

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“It’s no secret that today’s retail landscape has shifted from ‘shopping efficiency’ to experiential. Customers want and expect elevated treatment from their brands. Specifically, brands that they frequent,” says the company’s SVP for direct to consumer, John Hazen.

Street Fight Daily: Google to Introduce Echo Rival, Amazon to Open More Stores

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Google To Introduce its Voice-Activated Home Device… Amazon To Open More Brick-and-Mortar Stores, Beef Up Prime Services… ClipCall Uses Mobile and Video to Help Consumers Connect with Home Service Providers…

Unacast Raises $5 Million to Build Out Its Beacon Network

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CEO Thomas Walle (who will be speaking at #SFSW16 in just three weeks) says the company will use the funding to develop more partnerships to build out its network of proximity companies so that it can use the aggregate data to “index the physical world.”

Sponsored Post: 5 Social Media Mistakes SMBs Make — and How to Fix Them

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Whether an SMB uses Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and/or Pinterest or other networks, they need to consider the following mistakes they can make and how to successfully navigate the sometimes-choppy waters as they grow their social media presence and customer engagement…

Weighing the Local Promise of Bots and Conversational Commerce

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Are bots the future of the internet? Maybe, maybe not; like the buzz around Google Glass in 2013, we’re in the midst of a moment when it’s hard to tell the difference between hype and technological breakthrough.