News and Analysis

Walmart Mulls a Run at the Digital Ad Business

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With reports percolating about Amazon’s increasingly clear emergence as a third party to Google and Facebook’s dominance of the digital ad market, the e-commerce behemoth’s old-school counterpart is reportedly taking a look at the action itself.

Marin Q4 Advertising Report Shows eCommerce Ads Skyrocketing, Instagram and Search Growth Strong

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Digital marketing software firm Marin Software has released its Q4 advertising report, which points to major trends in social, search, and e-commerce. Instagram is taking on an increasingly central role in Facebook’s main business, e-commerce ads are booming YOY, and search remains fundamental to digital advertising, the report shows.

6 Next-Gen Review Marketing Platforms for Retail Brands

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Determined not to fall even further behind their online-only competitors, retailers are investing more heavily in a new breed of review platform. These next-generation solutions integrate written reviews with pictures and videos to create more cohesive omni-channel shopping experiences. Here are six next-gen review platforms that brands are using right now.

Commentary

Survey: Many National-to-Local Marketers Use Home-Grown Management and Analytics Tools

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Relatively few of these sophisticated companies make use of a common tool for managing and coordinating campaigns. That’s the case even though a third of respondents said various local programs were centralized at headquarters.

The Rise of Text Messages as a Political Ad Medium

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The 2016 election will be remembered for many things, but for marketers it will be the emergence of text messages as a medium. Text messaging has become an essential tool in running a political campaign and every candidate now uses SMS/MMS to get the word out.

Survey: How National-to-Local Marketers Plan to Grow Their Digital Budgets

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Street Fight recently surveyed decision makers at over 200 national-to-local marketers and found nearly half of them spend a third or more of their digital marketing budget in support of their franchises, branch offices, and distributors.

Latest Posts

Street Fight Daily: Yahoo Signs a Search Deal with Google, MapQuest Launches Brand Refresh

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Yahoo Has Signed a Deal with Google to Provide Search Ads (Business Insider)… MapQuest Wants You to Love It Again (The Next Web)… Google Discloses More Search Data to Woo Retailers (Wall Street Journal)…

Local Visionary Award Winners Announced

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The 2015 Street Fight Summit in New York saw the presentation of the first annual Local Visionary Awards, an eight-category competition designed to honor the very best campaigns, companies, ideas, and individuals in local marketing and commerce. The Innovator of the Year award went to Yext CEO Howard Lerman.

#SFSNYC: Beyond the Check-In: Big Data Analytics and the Evolution of Foursquare

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Dennis Crowley started Foursquare in 2009 from his kitchen in Manhattan with a lofty vision: Amass enough data to map out specific areas, build a location-based recommendation engine, and create navigation software. But when the company introduced gaming dynamics to encourage check-ins, that’s what it became known for. Today, Foursquare’s ambitions and vision lie well beyond the check-in.

#SFSNYC: Button, Urgent.ly, and Pager on Whether or Not On-Demand is Really Necessary in Local Commerce

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Of all the changes mobile has wrought, on-demand arguably has made the biggest splash. The emergence of companies offering products and services immediately, with only a tap or two of a phone or tablet screen, is pushing incumbents to change their business models to stay on top of their industries. Three of these young-gun threats — Button, Urgent.ly, and Pager — made an appearance at the Street Fight Summit, speaking on a panel about on-demand in local commerce.

#SFSNYC: Investor Ted Leonsis and BuzzFeed Editor-in-Chief Ben Smith on Media and the Local Economy

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The Street Fight Summit played host to a wide-ranging conversation between BuzzFeed editor-in-chief Ben Smith and investor Ted Leonsis. The fireside chat touched on Leonsis’s decades of local economy expertise, stemming from his many investments in and experiences with media ventures, professional sports teams, and ecommerce ventures, including Groupon.

#SFSNYC: Google, Yelp, and ironSource on How the New Generation of Mobile Search Is Changing Everything

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Mobile has become an automatic, subconscious extension of our digital lives, and technologies that leverage the versatility of smartphones are maturing rapidly. But the apps vs. web debate continues to rage. And where does search, which has existed since the early days of the internet, fit into the picture?

#SFSNYC: ReachLocal, ShopKeep, and Swipely on Whether or Not Vertical Approaches to Local Inevitably Become Horizontal

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Small businesses have a lot of options when it comes to choosing tools that keep things running smoothly. In fact, they have a lot of options even when partnering with a single vendor because companies within the connected local economy are transforming into marketing one-stop shops for advertising, point-of-sale (POS), and other solutions critical to the daily operations of SMBs.

Small Businesses Rate Social, SEO, Email as Most Effective Marketing Tools

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Small businesses continue to be in love with social media. In the first in a series of surveys Street Fight will be conducting with Alignable, we asked approximately 100 small business owners to rate their most effective marketing tools and tactics among a list of a dozen. Two-thirds of respondents selected social media as one of their top three. SEO and email rounded out the list of leading techniques.

Case Study: Mattress Retailer Captures Millennials with Digital Strategies

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The vast majority of mattress sales still take place in brick-and-mortar stores. However, America’s Mattress of Onalaska owner Dave Weinberger says he’s found that millennial shoppers are increasingly doing their pre-shopping research online. In response, he’s begun shifting his advertising budget away from offline channels and toward digital tactics, like call tracking and recording, search marketing, and online promotions.

Street Fight Daily: Snapchat Cuts Ties with Yahoo, Publishers Share Digital Advertising Strategies

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Why Snapchat Axed Yahoo from Discover (Fast Company)… What’s Actually Working in Digital Advertising? 8 Publishers on How They’re Bringing in Money (Nieman Lab)… Yelp Is Using Image Search to Change How It Finds You a Bar (Wired)…