News and Analysis

Google Finds Itself Beneath EU Regulatory Hammer Once More

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Google has been fined $1.7 billion for violating Europe’s antitrust policies. Specifically, the company stands accused of compelling companies that deploy its search capabilities on their own platforms to display a disproportionately high humber of text ads that will line Google’s pockets.

online privacy

During Privacy Battle, Brands Adjust Location Targeting Strategy

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Can privacy and personalization ever be compatible? It’s not a question consumers regularly ask, even though concerns over targeting and apps that continuously log location data grow greater by the day. For marketers, however, the answer to whether privacy and personalization can coexist, and what happens to location data in the wake of tightening restrictions, has important ramifications. Industry experts weigh in.

Location Data Verification Firm Location Sciences Expands to Americas

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As the location data and marketing industries experience heightened calls for privacy and quality control, location data verification solution Location Sciences is expanding to the Americas. The London-based firm also announced on Tuesday morning its appointment of digital marketing veteran Warren Zenna to take the helm on this side of the Atlantic.

Commentary

Foursquare’s Rosenblatt: ‘Location Is the Atomic Unit of Mobile’

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Foursquare has gone from check-in darling to an under-recognized data powerhouse. But in that transition, it’s more successful than ever. And its primary emphasis has remained the entire time: real-world consumer behavior. Meanwhile, the ad industry’s hunger for location data grows.

Selling to SMBs: AIDA and The Conversion Zone

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I’m often asked by entrepreneurs and venture capitalists alike to talk about what changes throughout the course of the “bell curve ride” in selling to small and medium-sized businesses — and how organizations need to adapt at each stage in order to ensure continued success. Here’s the best way I can explain how it all works.

The Increasing Impact of Reviews and Google+ (?!) on Local SEO

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Some new data has given us some “big time insight” into how Google is using authoritative local sites to inform local search rankings, says David Mihm. Mike Blumenthal agrees, saying that the prominence of local review pages and appears to be “transferring prominence directly to the local entity in a way that is totally independent of links.”

Latest Posts

4 Ways That Retailers Can Gain Traction on Mobile

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As retailers continue to reimagine marketing to consumers using mobile, the tools to do so will evolve as well. Similar to marketing automation for B2B, retailer-focused solutions providers are enriching their platforms so that retailers can deliver marketing messages and offers to highly segmented consumers.

5 Timeless Sales Practices for Vendors Who Sell to SMBs

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The devil is in the details: the tone of a subject line, timing of a phone call, recency of the point of contact, marketing cadence, and value proposition positioning — all impact sales. Yet many conversations tend to forget these basics and focus instead on new-age, shiny fixes.

Street Fight Daily: UberEats App Launching Soon Across U.S., Square Takes a Hit

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Uber Prepares Meal-Delivery Service for 10 U.S. Cities (Wall Street Journal)… Square Falls Below Its IPO Price (Fortune)… Boxed, the Ecommerce Startup for Costco-Sized Orders, Nabs $100M (Forbes)…

6 Smart Ways Retailers Can Use Heat Maps to Drive Conversions

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What do customer movements inside stores have to do with conversions? It turns out, quite a lot. Slight changes in routing can increase the traffic around promotional displays and help avoid bottlenecks. Some of the smartest retailers are installing beacons, WiFi, and other hyperlocal technologies as a way to generate heat maps that track customer flows.

Local Media Consortium Touts New comScore-Validated Reach

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The 75 newspaper groups and broadcasters that comprise the Local Media Consortium have always pitched advertisers that their “premium” content pulled in big numbers of readers. But LMC’s stats on unique visitors to its members’ 1,600 digital platforms were produced by a crazy quilt of measurements from individual publishers. The result was totals so high […]

Street Fight Daily: Foursquare’s New Plan, Tech’s Dominating ‘Frightful 5’

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Foursquare’s Plan to Use Your Data to Make Money — Even if You Aren’t a User (Wired)… Tech’s ‘Frightful 5’ Will Dominate Digital Life for Foreseeable Future (New York Times)… What’s Next For Lead Generation? (TechCrunch)…

Feastly Co-founder: ‘We’re Looking to Become the Largest Dining Establishment in the World’

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Feastly wants to connect you with a specific chef instead of a restaurant, so that you can have a unique meal prepared for you and your party wherever you want to eat it. Street Fight recently caught up with Feastly’s co-founder Noah Karesh and advisor Lem Lloyd to talk about the thinking behind the service.

How the Tech Emerging From CES Could Impact Local Advertisers

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While some of the consumer-facing products that made headlines won’t hit store shelves for months, there was plenty to learn from the show for anyone involved in media, software, content, and design. Here’s a look at how some of these technologies could impact advertising planning and creation right now.

Street Fight Daily: DoorDash’s Unicorn Hopes Fall Short, Rite Aid’s Massive Beacon Program

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… DoorDash Struggles in Quest for $1 Billion Valuation (Wall Street Journal)… Rite Aid Preps One of the Largest Beacon Activations (GeoMarketing)… The Goldman Sachs Note Behind the Theory that Apple has Figured Out How ‘to Starve Google’s Core Business Into Irrelevance’ (Business Insider)…

Openings and New Hires at GoDaddy, Revel Systems, Gatehouse Media

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Every two weeks, Geoff Michener covers some of the latest job changes taking place in this dynamic industry. In this week’s column, Shopify appoints a new COO, the Morning Call has a new publisher, and a digital sales vet is promoted at CBS.