News and Analysis
Within 24 Hours, Further Signs That HUD’s Facebook Probe Could Upend Digital Ad Industry
What’s at stake in the Facebook housing discrimination probe and related investigations into Google and Twitter is whether the dissemination of online content—the news, product recommendations, advertising campaigns of all kinds, and entertainment—can and should be permitted on the basis of data collected on users’ personal characteristics and past behaviors. Should organizations, in industries as varied as entertainment, apparel, tech, and education, be permitted to use evolving technology to predict whom ads should target and thus who should see the content promoting Berkeley’s MBA program, the new housing development in Long Island City, or the hip sunglasses Warby Parker will never get me to buy? How does past human behavior and long-term inequality in various groups’ access to privileged resources shape ad targeting and the technology that automates it, and can the tech industry reach beyond those limitations to open up new futures instead of capitalizing on and reinforcing historical distinctions?
The news this week of the Trump administration’s first charges filed against a major tech company is the first step on our path to finding out.
Automated Ad Targeting Ensnares Facebook in a Discrimination Lawsuit
The lawsuit is big news not just for Facebook or for housing-related ads but for the digital advertising industry as a whole. That’s because it marks the first major federal attempt to use the resources of the law to curb ad targeting on the basis of racial discrimination. As interest in regulating broad tech spreads across the country and political spectrum, the lawsuit could prove a harbinger of harsher laws to come.
3 CRO Techniques That Actually Convert Visitors
The web is filled to the brim with quick conversion rate optimization tips. These include changing the color of your CTAs, making headlines catchier, and changing the background image of your landing page, among many others. While these strategies have shown results, there are a few effective CRO techniques that are often overlooked. In this article, I discuss less common CRO techniques that have the potential to drive significant results.
Latest Posts
Street Fight Daily: Yelp and OpenTable End Partnership, Google’s Plans For Accelerated Mobile Pages
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Yelp, OpenTable Part Ways amid Heightened Competition (Reuters)… Inside Google’s Plan to Speed Up the Mobile Web (Poynter)… DoorDash Partners with b8ta for On-Demand Tech Gadget Delivery (TechCrunch)…
Is the Humble Phone Call Actually the Killer App for Local Businesses?
It turns out reports of voice calling’s death are greatly exaggerated. Despite an explosion in data usage and mobile messaging, voice calling — facilitated by search and virtual assistants — remains a popular activity among mobile users. A lot of those calls are going to local businesses, where they are more likely to convert to revenue than web forms or emails.
6 Reasons Why Hyperlocal Tech Initiatives Continue to Elude Consumers
Hyperlocal is a totally logical concept in the minds of technologists, analysts, and investors, but many hyperlocal tech initiatives have yet to catch fire with consumers. Part of the challenge is people are creatures of habit. Here are six reasons why hyperlocal tech will continue to elude consumers’ grasp in 2016.
Street Fight Daily: Facebook Partners with Uber, Will Google’s Driverless Cars Be the Next Uber/Lyft?
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Facebook Messenger Now Lets You Hail Uber Rides (The Next Web)… Google’s Plan for Self-Driving Cars Means It Will Have to Compete with Uber (Recode)… Brand Relevance and Revenue in the Age of Snapchat (Nieman Lab)…
7 Ways Predictive Intelligence Can Be Applied to Small Business Marketing
Small business owners have the tendency to shy away from advanced technologies like predictive intelligence, however experts in the field say that’s a mistake, and many of today’s platforms can be implemented by merchants on Main Street. Here are seven ways that small businesses can get in on the action and start using predictive intelligence tools today.
5 Reasons Why Local Marketing Will Mature in 2016
The past few years have seen the introduction of a whole universe of new tools designed to address individual aspects of digital marketing. In 2016, we will see a shift away from many of these discreet, single-purpose tools toward more comprehensive marketing solutions, DataSphere’s Gary Cowan predicts. Here’s a look at five ways SMB local marketing will mature in the coming year.
Street Fight Daily: New Google Research on ‘Micro-Moments,’ What Won’t Happen in 2016
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Google Says Search Intent Matters More for Marketers Than User Identity (Adweek)… Trends for 2016: What Won’t Happen (eMarketer)… What You Need to Know About Facebook’s New Local Search ‘Test’ (Marketing Land)…
Storefront Fills a Growing Market for Short-Term Retail Spaces
Pop-up shops are becoming of a fixture of the omnichannel retail landscape — and not just during the holiday season. Storefront is a three-year-old startup that connects anyone who wants to sell and promote their wares with landlords who have retail spaces they want to rent — a “marketplace for renting short-term retail space,” as co-founder and CEO Erik Eliason described it. The model is proving successful in syncing both large retailers and local artisan/makers with physical spaces that would otherwise lie dormant.
Missing from ‘Spotlight’ Movie: How News Sites Pay for Top-Quality Investigative Journalism
The Boston Globe’s Spotlight investigative team uncovered the pedophile priest scandal in the Catholic Church, but for all the acclaim the reporting won, it didn’t save the paper from a catastrophic financial decline that nearly put the Globe out of business. To understand how such journalistic success could be followed by such financial failure, Street Fight spoke with Dan Kennedy, associate professor in the School of Journalism at Northeastern University, who has written extensively about the subject.
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