News and Analysis
Fresh Chalk Has a New Take on Local Reviews
Despite digital change, recommendations from friends remain one of the most credible forms of marketing. Now, a new startup called Fresh Chalk is aiming to capitalize on that, giving consumers a way to find local professionals with help from their friends.
Like Yelp, Facebook, Google, and other local business directories, Fresh Chalk is aiming to help people source recommendations from reliable, qualified businesses in their own communities. But unlike most other competitors in the market, Fresh Chalk is keeping a tight focus on personal connections.
This Largely Brick-and-Mortar Industry Is Resisting Digital Disruption
Despite Amazon’s high-profile acquisition of Whole Foods in 2017, grocery is the bastion of brick-and-mortar shopping proving unusually resistant to a takeover by digital channels. At least, that is the vision of consumers, only 15% of whom say they are excited about the technical “revolution” in grocery, according to a new report on the future of retail by Walker Sands.
Startups Adapt to Shifting Privacy Standards
Two steps forward, one step back. That’s what it can feel like to be a technology provider in the location marketing space right now, struggling to strike a balance between the demands of brand marketers and growing concerns over consumer privacy and data regulation.
That push and pull is challenging vendors in the location marketing space. At the same time their firms should be seeing exponential growth, data regulations—including the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and California’s forthcoming Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA)—are establishing new rules for innovation.
But some companies are embracing the regulation as a challenge to innovate in its own right.
Commentary
Reimagining the Mobile Banner: In-App Ad Innovation Spares Brands from Google’s Interstitial Pinch
The future of our work is about designing smarter ways to reach users, so we need to focus on ways to drive engagement, not distraction. And that means finding subtle things that trigger the meaningful interactions. This isn’t 1999; we’re not building banners for last century’s desktop.
So, as January 10 approaches, let’s look at some creative models from the app side of the table
Why Local Search Is Even More Important in the Age of Ad Blocking
With so many people blocking traditional advertising, a growing proportion of internet users cannot be reached through “classic” search engine marketing. That’s why in the context of ad blocking, SEO is still king.
Foursquare’s Rosenblatt: ‘Location Is the Atomic Unit of Mobile’
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.
Latest Posts
4 Ways That Retailers Can Gain Traction on Mobile
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
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
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
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
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’
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’
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
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
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
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.
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Google’s New AI Search Rules Create a Challenge for MULO Brands