News and Analysis

Report: Consumer Expectations for Brands Higher than Ever in Age of Convenience

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With the omnichannel age upon us, the impact of bad customer experiences is unprecedented. The main fear for businesses should no longer be a standoff between the worker behind the customer service desk and the angry customer who failed to get his discount; it should be the rant that hits social and is shared or liked a slew of times, dragging digital reputations through the mud.

Walmart Tests Out the “Future of Retail” in Long Island Store

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There’s no time for the future of retail like the present. That is the motto at Walmart’s Intelligent Retail Lab, a live experiment in AI-driven shopping experiences that is now open to the public at a Walmart Neighborhood Market in Levittown, NY. 

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.

Commentary

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.

Why Hasn’t a Killer App Emerged for Finding Local Events?

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The local events space is still waiting on its ubiquitous app. There’s Yelp for restaurants. And Uber/Lyft for getting to and from. But there’s not yet a go-to for the crux of the night – the thing you do when you’re out on the town.

How Cisco’s Meraki Became the Largest Vendor of Bluetooth Beacon Gateways

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While Meraki’s routers have long had the ability to broadcast iBeacon packets, in October they released a software upgrade which enables API access to these radios, activating a major new feature. Now customers can use their Wi-Fi access points to monitor beacons from third party vendors.

Latest Posts

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.

Street Fight Daily: Whole Foods Invests in Instacart, Ad Blocking Debate Gets Tempers Flaring

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Whole Foods to Invest in Instacart, Signs New Multi-Year Delivery Deal (Recode)… Fear, Loathing, and Opportunity On Display as Ad Industry Eyeballs Specter of Mobile Ad Blocking (TechCrunch)… Foursquare Won’t Be Facebook and That’s Just Fine, Crowley Says (Bloomberg)…

/Local: ‘Slashing’ the Local Web Into Tiny Nearby Slices

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“It’s 2016, and everyone is connected to the information superhighway, and yet our towns, cities and locations are largely still dark and unsearchable,” says Local Web co-founder Jess Bachman. “The Local Web is the off-ramp for the Web. The problems it will solve are as varied as the people using it. “

NearSt Founder: Shopping Locally Can Be Easier Than Ordering From Amazon

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The London-based startup wants to give brick-and-mortar stores the power to satisfy consumer needs as quickly as possible by offering them a platform to make their inventories searchable online — so users can search for and order specific items, and then get them right away.

Rocket Fuel and The Data Trust Partner to Improve GOP Ad Targeting

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Political marketers will be able to leverage Rocket Fuel’s Moment Scoring technology, which the company describes as “a real-time calculation of each ad opportunity based on the likelihood that a consumer will engage in a desired action across channels, devices, and objectives.”