News and Analysis
In Test of On-Demand Economy’s Durability, Postmates Files to Go Public
There’s nothing more hyperlocal than the on-demand class of startups, which feed off the everyday use cases spurred by a mobile-first world: whipping one’s phone out to order food from a local restaurant (Postmates, GrubHub, DoorDash), hail a ride (Uber and Lyft), or cut out a trip to the grocery store (Instacart, Shipt). Postmates’ founding ingenuity was to apply the convenience of ride-sharing to product delivery. Eight years later, it’s a food-delivery powerhouse, and its value may strike nearly $2 billion.
What Is 5G? Some Facts and Marketing Implications
As the next generation in mobile connectivity, 5G should promise smoother data transmission, higher-quality mobile streaming, and more efficient energy usage. And it’s those benefits consumers are excited about, newly available data from Verizon Media indicates, with 72% of surveyed consumers excited about faster data transfer speeds and 57% eager for higher-definition video content. But industry watchdogs are skeptical.
How Brands Are Using AI to Fight Back Against Dark Marketing
According to some estimates, as many as 85% of Facebook ads and 60% of YouTube ads are hidden from public view. The practice is even more common on Twitter, where an estimated 90% of ads are hidden. What does that mean, exactly? Rather than posting their messages publicly, major brands are creating social media posts or sponsored content that is only shown to targeted audiences. Unlike organic or boosted posts, these targeted ads don’t show up on the company’s timelines or all of their followers’ feeds.
Commentary
What Designing an ‘OS for Restaurants’ Really Requires
When you look at the restaurant tech stack, there are clearly solutions, software, applications that should play nicely with each other, but the larger players have purposefully walled off their gardens. The next multi-billion-dollar company in this space will identify the mission-critical pieces of technology in the stack, and own them.
Latest Posts
Misalignment Between Brands and Local Affiliates May Be Wasting Massive Amounts of Co-op Funds
National brands rely on a complex web of local affiliates for representation, distribution, and channel marketing and sales. In these sometimes shaky partnerships, it turns out that massive resources in the form of co-op and market development fund (MDF) programs often go unused or get misdirected, largely due to misalignment between brands and their affiliates.
Case Study: Westport Restaurant Views Social Marketing as Digital Word-of-Mouth
Local merchants in every vertical are relying more on social media marketing for customer acquisition and retention, but restaurants in particular have become heavy users of social platforms. This year, 50 percent of casual dining and fine dining operators said they planned to devote even more resources to social media marketing. Hyperlocal vendors like Perch are providing business owners with a way to consolidate most social marketing tasks in one centralized app.
Street Fight Daily: Facebook’s Location-Centric Notifications Update, Etsy’s Same-Day Delivery
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… With Updated Notifications, Facebook Pulls People Down the Rabbit Hole (GigaOm)… Etsy ASAP Brings Same-Day Delivery to NYC (The Next Web)… Square Reports Another Loss as IPO Roadshow Approaches (Wall Street Journal)…
Getting Pushy with Notifications Can Pay Off with Millennials
With the volume and velocity of messaging in the digital economy increasing seemingly exponentially, brands everywhere need to weigh not only what information and content they share but also how much and the delivery channel they use. When it comes to highly connected millennials who use location-based apps, a new study indicates brands and retailers stand a good chance of cutting through the clutter with push notifications.
Local Papers Unload on Viewability Bad Actors and ‘Garbage Inventory’
Ever since a 2014 Google study documented that 52 percent of ad impressions actually were not seen by users, viewability has been a front-burner issue for marketers and publishers alike. The digital platforms of local newspapers serve up billions of ad impressions monthly, putting these publishers right in the middle of the issue. To find out how they’re responding, Street Fight spoke with Tobias Bennett, the Local Media Consortium’s advertising expert.
#SFSNYC Recap: 5 Key Takeaways from This Year’s Summit
The annual Street Fight Summit assembled more than 350 marketers, solutions providers, technologists, and media executives to discuss pressing issues and developments in the connected local economy. Here are five key takeaways from the day’s keynotes, panel discussions, and fireside chats.
Street Fight Daily: Uber Seeks to Raise Another $1B, Is Amazon Building Its Own Shipping Network?
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Uber Said to Plan Another $1 Billion in Fundraising (New York Times)… Amazon May Be Building a Team That Will Help It Replace FedEx and UPS (Business Insider)… Mobile Payments Will Triple in the U.S. in 2016 (eMarketer)…
Street Culture: Humility and Good Conversations at Instacart
On-demand grocery shopping and delivery service Instacart is make headway at disrupting a multi-billion-dollar industry. Driving that effort is a relentless focus on satisfying customers. “One policy we’ve implemented at Instacart is that every employee, from the engineers up to our CEO, goes out shopping once a quarter to get an understanding of being a shopper and how our service affects the customer. Everybody here does it,” says vice president of people Mathew Caldwell.
Openings and New Hires at Thumbtack, Polar, and Yodle
Every two weeks, Geoff Michener covers some of the latest job changes taking place in this dynamic industry. In this week’s column, Bing loses Duane Forrester, senior product manager in charge of webmaster outreach, newly minted unicorn Thumbtack appoints a CFO and general counsel, Polar hires a Googler as president of international, and Yodle brings on a president for its Brand Networks business.
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