News and Analysis
While Sales Growth Rate Slows, Amazon Marketplace, Cloud, and Ad Businesses Point to Long-Term Prosperity
For brands hoping to compete with Amazon (and potentially looking on with relief at a sign of fallibility from their digital rival), the company’s earnings report brings the news that Amazon Marketplace, where third-party sellers can reach customers, is doing more than twice as much in sales as Amazon’s first-party retail platform. Marketplace is troubled by bad practices and fake reviews, and its prosperity suggests the growing challenge for brands to get customers to even go to their sites at a time when Amazon is essentially the homepage of the commerce-oriented Internet.
As Voice Gets Established, Brands Grapple with Implementation
Consumer demand for voice technology has never been greater, and industry heavyweights like Google and Amazon are gearing up for a platform war as they work to integrate voice assistants into virtually every area of the connected consumer’s life. But behind the scenes, many brand marketers are struggling to connect the dots and design campaigns around a technology they don’t fully understand.
Apple Takes Advantage of Facebook’s Foul Play to Make a Privacy Statement
Not only did Facebook’s “Research” app, which paid 13- to 35-year-old users $20/month to access their search history, emails, and private messages, set off every imaginable alarm on the this-will-look-bad-when-the-exposé-comes-out PR radar (one of the world’s most powerful corporations must be lacking one of those), but the app also blatantly violated the terms of Apple’s Enterprise Developer Program, which proscribes distributing apps to consumers. It probably didn’t help that Facebook was searching tweens’ data for dirt on its competitors.
Latest Posts
#SFSNYC VIDEO: Booker CEO on the Tricky Process of Expanding into New Local Verticals
Booker CEO Josh McCarter opened his Street Fight Summit keynote address with a question that’s on the minds of many small business solutions providers: “How do you take a system that’s designed for one vertical and take it across more categories?” Factoring in the differing needs of various service-based businesses makes that question even more complex. But given the size of what McCarter termed the “local service commerce” opportunity, answering it could be tremendously lucrative.
How Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Uses Quality Journalism to Pay the Bills
Like other dailies, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has taken big hits in advertising and distribution revenue on the print side, but it’s still profitable. To find out how the Journal Sentinel uses quality journalism to stay in the black, Street Fight spoke with editor and senior vice president George Stanley.
#SFSNYC VIDEO: How the World’s Largest Advertiser, P&G, Targets Consumers on a Local Level
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
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
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.
Street Fight Daily: Facebook’s ‘Local Market’ Feature, Google Tries Foursquare Tips for Google Now
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
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
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.
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