News and Analysis

Facebook Expects Record-Setting FTC Fine for Privacy Violations

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Five billion would be a record for FTC punishment of a tech company and would signal harsher scrutiny to come for an industry that has accrued unparalleled wealth and power with little regulatory oversight. Facebook’s fine comes after a saga of instances in which it failed to protect user data. Most damningly, the company vowed to shore up its data protection practices in 2011 and can now be accused of failing to uphold that promise.

How Forward-Thinking Brands Are Leveraging Automation

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Global brands—the kind that can afford huge teams of in-house marketers—are increasingly relying on marketing automation tools to manage triggered email campaigns, prioritize leads for sales, and leverage mobile campaigns across their customers’ journeys.

Here is how five top global brands are deploying automation to improve the way they interact with customers.

Report: Upon Unlocking Phones, People Flock to Social, Messaging

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Anyone with a smartphone unimmune to our pervasive cultural addiction with digital communication will be unsurprised: It’s WhatsApp, Snapchat, and Facebook that currently capture most of the attention when we mindlessly unlock our mobile devices.

That’s according to media measurement company Verto Analytics, which released a report just this morning on the earliest part of the mobile journey: what happens right when we unlock our phones some 50 times per day.

Commentary

Is There an SMB Analytics Market? And If So, What Should It Measure?

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“I’m not convinced small businesses without a full-time in-house marketer really care about analytics,” David Mihm tells Mike Blumenthal in their bi-weekly chat. “They certainly don’t have the time or expertise to dive in each week and change their marketing or customer service behavior based on what a dashboard is telling them.”

New AIs Offer Surprisingly Traditional Results for Local

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At least for now, Alexa and Google are thinking of AI-powered local search in the traditional sense of providing the user with a range of relevant options — even when organic search is trending toward the single best answer.

Street Fight Staff and Friends Predict 2017’s Top Stories (Part Two)

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As 2016 draws to a close, we’ve once again asked Street Fight staffers and columnists to look into their crystal ball and offer prognostications for what they think will be the biggest story (or stories) in local in 2017.

Latest Posts

Openings and New Hires at TruMeasure, Brandmuscle, MapQuest

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Every two weeks, Geoff Michener covers some of the latest job changes taking place in this dynamic industry. This week’s edition includes a new digital strategist at Emagine, and a promotion for Vendasta’s Jackie Cook.

Raise Report: Fresh Funding for Qubit, Thrive Commerce, ModoPayments

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Every two weeks, we round up some of the biggest fundraises taking place in hyperlocal marketing, commerce, and tech. This week’s edition includes new cash infusions for Qualia, TripTease and MoveBubble.

LBMA Podcast: Web.com, Alibaba, and Zuckerberg on Oculus OS

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On the show: Web.com acquires Yodle; Alibaba invests in Groupon; Walgreens gets deeper into beacons; Kontakt.io raises $5M clams; Foursquare + Delivery.com; Exterion pulling O2 customer data for OOH targeting; Yoose + Telkomsel case study

Street Fight Daily: Google’s Vision for AMP, Millennials Are Changing the Privacy Game for Marketers

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… A Q&A with Google’s Head of News On Its Vision for Accelerated Mobile Pages (Nieman Lab)… Digital-Savvy Millennials Will Sacrifice Privacy for Personalization, Says Exec (Adweek)… Overnight, the App for Booking Last-Minute Spaces with Local Hosts, Closes $2.5M Seed Round (TechCrunch)…

How the Rise of the On-Demand Economy Is Driving Flexible Convenience

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“Customers drive booking, bookings drive pros, the pros drive availability and availability comes all the way back around and drives customers and booking,” Handy founder Oisin Hanrahan tells Street Fight. His company and others are figuring out over time what works and what doesn’t in local on-demand.

San Angelo LIVE Innovates to Hold Onto Revenue Amid West Texas Oil Bust

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The oil bust in West Texas has hit the San Angelo metro area hard. But the independent community news site San Angelo LIVE has been holding onto its revenues through energetic innovations in audience engagement, editorial content and client promotion.

Street Fight Daily: The Benefits of Cross-Device Data, Possible Outcomes of Google’s Antitrust Case

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Why Every Enterprise Will Soon Be Addicted to Cross-Device Data (The Next Web)… What’s Next for Google’s Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad European Antitrust Case? (Recode)… The Next Big Thing in Retail: Programmatic Commerce (Forbes)…

Closing the Loop: PlaceIQ, LiveRamp Connect TV Campaigns With Location Visits

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PlaceIQ and LiveRamp have announced the results of a new consumer behavior model that connects TV to the real world. The companies conducted a number of campaigns delivering targeted TV ads and then used location data to measure real-world store visitations, resulting in an average lift of 46 percent across three targeted verticals.

6 Tools Local Merchants Can Use to Grow Their Email Lists

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Email marketing is cheap and it’s effective, but it isn’t always easy for small businesses. For local merchants, the toughest part about email marketing can be generating a list of engaged subscribers. Here are six examples of tools that merchants can use to grow their email lists.

GrubHub’s Chia: Scale and ‘Strong Partnership Model’ Keep Company Afloat in Saturated Market

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Competition in the local delivery space has exploded in the past few years as on-demand providers rushed to connect service providers with consumers as efficiently as possible. Street Fight recently caught up with GrubHub’s SVP of Operations, Stan Chia, who says the company’s fundamental mission — restaurant discovery — hasn’t changed.