News and Analysis
Klos Founders See Opportunity in Social Messaging Market
Like so many other startups, Klos is being marketed as a solution to a problem. In this case, the company’s founders see the problem as social media being inherently anti-social. Original broadcast sharing on legacy social media networks like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn is on the decline. Messaging services like WhatsApp and iMessage are incredibly popular, but they don’t help people expand their social networks. While there are existing services, like Tinder and Bumble, that combine messaging and network expansion, they almost all fall into the dating app category.
A Return to Contextual Advertising?
Digital advertising and marketing have long been positioned as “the future” of advertising. But with the rapid changes in media and information technology of the past two decades, the future has arrived. Google recently promoted the idea that “we’re now in an era where digital marketing is just marketing.” But as the industry advances and as new protective regulations around personal data privacy are introduced, it’s also possible that some of the change could involve relying more on previously established methods. Specifically, it is possible that we are on the verge of a return to contextual advertising as the dominant form of online ads.
How VR and AR Are Changing the Car-Buying Experience
New cars are incredibly expensive, and most people don’t feel comfortable picking a vehicle based exclusively on two-dimensional images and whatever data they can pull up on the Kelley Blue Book website. Consumers don’t want to go into dealerships, either, so they end up delaying their purchases for as long as possible.
RelayCars thinks it has a solution.
The company has put together a program that uses augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) to help consumers research new cars and trucks. Getting a realistic view of a vehicle from their own homes helps users narrow down their selections and decreases the time shoppers need to spend test driving multiple cars.
Commentary
Luxury Lingerie Maker Cosabella Drives Sales with Email, Social Media
With Valentine’s Day upon us, what better time for looking at how a lingerie company does its digital marketing? Street Fight recently sat down with Cosabella CEO Guido Campello and marketing director Courtney Connell to talk about how company gets the word out about its products.
What Does It Mean to Practice Local SEO Ethically?
It can be all too easy to give the client the impression that search marketing is too hard from them to really understand — so they should just trust you. But that sets the stage for a relationship that is not based on ethical behavior.
Why Back-end Tech Is Key for Food Delivery Startups
Outside of college campuses, local food delivery startups generally have larger neighborhoods to cover and customers with more niche needs. This may be why some of the biggest names in local delivery don’t seem as different at first glance, because their focus is on the back-end.
Latest Posts
Street Fight Daily: Amazon’s Powerful Lobbyists, comScore and Viacom Announce Multiplatform Deal
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Amazon Leans on Government in Its Quest to Be a Delivery Powerhouse (New York Times)… comScore Says Multiplatform Deal with Viacom Will Transform How Ads Are Bought (Adweek)… Uber’s Quest to Catch the Tourist Buck (VentureBeat)…
Can LifePosts’ Digital Obits Provide Clues for Sustainable Local Publishing?
LifePost’s digital obits are offering a way to commemorate people and pets in a dedicated place outside of social media. The idea has drawn support from Twitter ex-CEO Dick Costolo, among others.
Street Culture: Multi-Location Brands Connect Employees With Beekeeper
Beekeeper is like Slack but for companies with employees who are on the move, waiting tables and parking cars. The mobile-based communications platform is growing quickly and meeting a current need in the marketplace.
Street Fight Daily: Airbnb Plans to Expand Service Offerings, On-Demand Assistant App GoButler Pivots
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Airbnb Plans to Offer Add-On Travel Services This Year (Bloomberg)… GoButler Pivots to Fully-Automated Service, Starting with Flight Search and Discovery (TechCrunch)… Can LifePost’s Digital Obits Provide Clues for Sustainable Local Publishing? (Street Fight)…
Brands, Meet the Data Amplifiers
Data amplifiers distribute and publish your data to a broader audience than you could ever do on your own — what I call the “network effect.” Your brand becomes more visible because your business data becomes more open and accessible to the influencers who are in a position to help customers find your business.
Retailers Shift Focus to Offline Affiliate Marketing
Location analytics represent the new battleground in retail, but imagine if you could apply the same analytics for online attribution to offline purchases. Offline affiliate marketing does just that, giving retailers the tools to analyze data from in-store purchases similar to what they can do for online purchases.
Drawbridge CEO: ‘Programmatic Has Led the Charge for Cross-Device’
Kamakshi Sivaramakrishnan founded programmatic ad platform Drawbridge in 2010 after a stint at Google. She spoke recently with Street Fight about Drawbridge’s solutions, the ever-changing nature of mobile targeting, and the constant misinterpretation of the word “programmatic.”
Street Fight Daily: Google to Further Penalize Mobile-Unfriendly Websites, More Layoffs at LivingSocial
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Google’s Latest Mobile Search Algorithm Update Makes Having a Mobile-Friendly Site Even More Important (TechCrunch)… LivingSocial Is Laying Off More Than 50 Percent of Its Staff (Recode)… Uber Debuts Family Profiles to Let You Pay for Others’ Rides (TechCrunch)…
Yodle Weighs in on How Google’s SERP Change Has Affected Online Ads for SMBs
With a few weeks of empirical data, we now have a much clearer sense of how or if this change has affected local AdWords campaigns. At Yodle, we have seen a negligible effect on the performance metrics of the search engine marketing (SEM) campaigns we run on behalf of our local small business clients.
How Badly Do Consumers Really Want Grocery Delivery?
Instacart is bumping up against the realities of the economy. There are two countervailing trends that are working against the idea of grocery delivery: frugality, and shopping-as-entertainment.
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Meta Is Automating Ads, But Brands Still Face a Bigger Problem