News and Analysis
Foursquare Acquires Placed, Announces $150M in Funding
Foursquare and Placed are location tech’s new power couple.
The location intelligence firm is acquiring Placed, which had previously been bought by Snap for its top-rate online-to-offline attribution solution, and the two will offer one of the most powerful attribution solutions in the location industry, to be called Placed powered by Foursquare.Â
As ad tech faces tougher times and a privacy-driven crackdown on data collection and ad targeting practices, more mergers and acquisitions are likely to transform the industry’s terrain. Teaming up and stockpiling as much first-party data as possible, thereby eliminating the need for less compliant modes of data harvesting, will boost the longevity of some firms while others flounder.
SMBs Warm Up to New Tech But Are Skeptical of Impersonal Interactions
A freshly released report from SMB software firm Broadly uses data from a survey of 300 SMB leaders to paint a picture of the American SMB in 2019: gradually embracing mobile-first communication, skeptical of innovation that undercuts human connection, and ambivalent toward large digital marketplaces like Amazon and Etsy.
Visual Search Moves Beyond Experimentation and Into Prime Time
After years of experimentation and broad discussions about how visual search would someday take hold, it’s clear that the future has arrived. Visual search has moved into the mainstream, and companies like Pinterest, Instagram, and even Google are paving the way for consumers to engage more deeply with the products they find online.
As visual search moves into the mainstream, questions are intensifying over what impact the medium will have on SEO and traditional search metrics.
Commentary
Brand Battles in Depth: Looking at Starbucks vs. Dunkin’ Donuts
The series demonstrates the real complexity of cross-platform digital marketing and the importance of a data-driven strategy in identifying meaningful objectives and tracking performance. This commentary explains how Brand Battles are constructed and how their subject areas fits into the bigger picture of local marketing for national brands.
As Voice Search Gains Importance, So Does Schema Mark-up for SMB Sites
Like it or not, SMBs have become far more educated and sophisticated with regard to digital media, and are in a much better position to hold their providers accountable. As a result, providers now must look for ways to more cost effectively provide higher quality products.
Why Brands Need to Master Prompted Search
When a business launches a new product, or, say, the latest Harry Potter adaptation hits the market, retailers are often challenged to update their location pages in a timely manner to show the availability of the product for consumers who rely on local search to find what they want nearby.
Latest Posts
Street Fight Daily: How Google and Apple Dominate the Web, Self-Driving Lyfts Are Coming
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… The Web Giants Are Raising the Performance Bar on Everyone (ReadWrite)… GM to Launch Self-Driving Lyft Fleet in Austin, Texas (Mashable)… How Local Governments Are Using Technology to Serve Citizens Better (Harvard Business Review)…
How Brick-and-Mortar Merchants Can Win at Local Search
A battle is being waged online, as independent merchants struggle for top billing in local search results. We asked six experts in the local search industry for their best strategies for “winning” local search. Here’s what they said.
Ad Tech, Local Media and the 2016 Political Campaign
In this year’s presidential campaign, news and information consumers can be reached via a wide range of channels, and media buys can be executed in milliseconds. Now that local inventory has joined this channel, political camps have the ability to execute local campaigns on a massive scale.
Turf Talk Redux: Looking for the Future in Companies, People, and Products
I like to be a little out in front of things. Not too far (hyperloops) and not too close (digital couponing). In my writing about local marketing and media (both here at Street Fight, and previously), I’ve generally been most comfortable investigating advancements that attempt to intersect the possible and the inevitable. For instance: the […]
Street Fight Daily: How SMBs Can Win at Local Search, Uber’s New Feature Is a Lot Like Foursquare
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… How Brick-and-Mortar Merchants Can Win in Local Search (Street Fight)… Uber Will Give You Things To Do While You’re On Your Trip (Mashable)… How Oracle Is Helping Retailers Sell More Stuff (Recode)…
How the Rise of Virtual Reality Could Impact Local Marketing
With each passing tech revolution, response time diminishes while opportunity cost grows. Local media companies that were late to the consumer internet or the smartphone revolution already know this pain. With VR and AR, local startups will be more agile to experiment than larger incumbents.
Nashville ‘Indie’ Home Page Media, Now 5 Sites, Expands ‘Where There’s a Need’
Kelly Gilfillan launched her Home Page Media Group in suburban Nashville in 2009 smack in the middle of affluent turf that had been long “owned” by Gannett’s the Tennesseean. Having expanded her model to several nearby communities since then, Gilfillan is on track to hit $1 million revenue by 2017.
Street Fight Daily: Ford Launching Commuter App, the Benefits of Retail Subscription Models
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Ford Plans Commuter App, Ford Car Not Required (USA Today)… How Subscriptions Are Creating Winners and Losers in Retail (Harvard Business Review)… Challenging Uber, Lyft Bets on a Road Wide Enough for Two (New York Times)…
Companies With Culture Data Outperform Those Without It
To figure out how to identify the right interactions to promote, CultureIQ measures 10 different operational and strategic company qualities. Three are most important: support, work environment, and mission and value alignment.
LBMA Podcast: Beacon’d Cities, Crowdsourced Maps, and P&G Tests Snapchat Ads
On the show: Adored loved to the tuned of $2.3 million; Fleetzen’s on-demand fleet of pick-up trucks; ShopperTrack acquired by Tyco; Starbucks teams with Alibaba; Twitter lets you control drones; LinkNYC wifi payphones are HERE!
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Meta Is Automating Ads, But Brands Still Face a Bigger Problem