News and Analysis

Google Is Increasingly Taking the Reins in Managing Campaigns for Advertisers

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Boosting its appeal beyond the reams of consumer data and stranglehold on search that make its digital advertising business the most expansive in the world, Google is increasingly executing campaigns for advertisers, deploying both automation and its own ad experts to get the job done.

New Hires at Uberall, MightyHive, Dream Local

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Every two weeks, our jobs columnist Geoff Michener provides a roundup of the latest hires in the digital marketing and media ecosystems. This week’s edition also includes new hires at Motive, JumpCrew, L’Oréal, and Pubmatic.

What Standard Cognition’s Big Play Means for Autonomous Retail

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If autonomous checkout systems ever go mainstream, it will be because retailers finally figured out how to effectively harness in-store cameras to determine where customers are and what items they’re holding in real-time. Reaching that goal has proven elusive to AI technology providers thus far, but a San Francisco-based startup called Standard Cognition is hoping that its recent acquisition of Explorer.ai, a mapping and computer vision firm, will be the catalyst that’s necessary to accelerate growth and expand into new retail verticals.

Commentary

Bypassing the Hurdles to Bring Programmatic to SMB Advertisers

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SMB advertisers care about reaching consumers, not the nitty gritty of technology covered in the ad trades. Local media companies and smaller agencies should focus on how programmatic technology helps them sell that outcome, rather than get stuck selling the technology itself.

Scaling the Neighborhood: A Community Focus for Local Services

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So far, digital services, even those focused on local, have done more to atomize local communities than unite them, training us to rely on anonymous resources for the information and recommendations we used to get from our friends and neighbors.

Survey: Some National-to-Local Marketers Still Need Convincing on Digital Effectiveness

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Street Fight surveyed over 200 managers and decision makers at big companies in retail, financial services, and other industries. We asked them about spending patterns, perceived effectiveness, pain points, etc., around their local marketing and advertising efforts.

Latest Posts

#SFSNYC VIDEO: How the World’s Largest Advertiser, P&G, Targets Consumers on a Local Level

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In a wide-ranging Street Fight Summit fireside chat, Ajay Kapoor, who oversees global business solutions for Procter & Gamble, covered everything from the wealth of market research sources P&G has at its disposal to channel marketing strategies to on-the-ground local initiatives in emerging markets like India.

Street Fight Daily: Amazon Kills Its Groupon and Square Competitors, the Rise of Hypertargeted Ads

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Amazon Kills Two Businesses: Local Daily Deals and Its Square Competitor (Recode)… The $21.8 Billion Reason Ultra-Personal Online Ads Are Coming (Fast Company)… Pondering Homejoy’s Failure (Medium)…

LBMA Podcast: Google Unveils Shopping Insights, Uniqlo Monitors Shoppers’ Brainwaves with UMood

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On the show: Google unveils Shopping Insights tool; Uniqlo’s UMood monitors shoppers’ brainwaves to help them pick the perfect t-shirt; Zikit’s “Now or Never” coupons; paying with sounds; Short Edition short story vending machine; Unmapped; Pixie tags; GPS-based metering in New York City. Plus, news from UNICEF and Target; and MapQuest.

#SFSNYC VIDEO: Where Are Today’s Billion-Dollar Local Opportunities?

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In a panel at the annual Street Fight Summit, two experienced venture capitalists active in the local space shared their outlook on funding trends, pitches they frequently hear, and the growing internationalization of startup culture.

Raise Report: Gobble, Bownty, and Clutter Post Strong Series A Rounds

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Every two weeks we round up some of the biggest fundraises taking place in hyperlocal marketing, commerce, and tech. In this edition, new investments include rounds for Gobble, Bownty, and Clutter.

Street Fight Daily: Facebook’s ‘Local Market’ Feature, Google Tries Foursquare Tips for Google Now

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Facebook Is Testing a New Feature That Makes It More Like Craigslist (Business Insider)… Google Is Testing Foursquare Tips in Google Now, Even When the App Isn’t Installed (VentureBeat)… Amazon Launches ‘Pay with Amazon’ Buttons for Mobile Apps (Recode)…

6 Full-Service Social Media Management Firms

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Small business owners have a reputation for being do-it-yourselfers, particularly when it comes to marketing and advertising. But with social spending on the rise, more of those business owners seem to be saying that if they want social media marketing done right, they need a professional to handle the job. Here are six full-service firms operating in the space right now.

The Privatization of Local Search

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Local search takes place across services that are proprietary and dedicated, even if indirectly, toward earning revenue for the companies that run them. But that doesn’t preclude us from thinking of local search as a kind of public utility whose objective is to provide accurate and consistent information. That means treating local listings primarily as a public good, not a business.

Street Fight Daily: Yelp’s Revenue Up 40%, Amazon to Launch Shopping Channel

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Yelp Swings to Loss, But Revenue Jumps 40% (Wall Street Journal)… Amazon Brings Ecommerce to Fire TV and Prepares to Launch Its Own Shopping Channel (GeekWire)… New Mobile Search Startup Focuses on Apps (New York Times)…

Forget DIY, DIWM, and DIFM: ‘Do Nothing’ is the Best Approach to Capturing the SMB Market

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The future of SMB marketing solutions isn’t do-it-yourself, do-it-for-me, or even do-it-with-me. Rather, it lies in a new go-to-market model called “do nothing” that combines context, content, software, and automation into solutions that are low-cost, have next to no barriers to entry, and require little in the way of learning or doing from customers.