News and Analysis

AT&T Says It Will Stop Selling Location Data as Practice Comes Under Greater Scrutiny

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AT&T announced late last week that it will stop selling location data, following an investigation from multimedia publication Motherboard indicating that a bounty hunter (yes, bounty hunter) equipped with a few hundred bucks and a phone number can track down the phone’s owner within a couple blocks’ radius. Verizon and T-Mobile joined AT&T in saying they would soon wind down any remaining location-data sharing deals.

This Solution Showcases the Future of Collecting Customer Feedback at POS

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Online reviews are one of the hot trends in local, reshaping how brick-and-mortar businesses stand out when trying to attract nearby customers. Tapping into the local Zeitgeist in a different use case, TruRating and GK Software are integrating their tech to allow businesses to garner feedback from their customers at the point of sale.

New Hires at TripleLift, Nintex, and S4

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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 in the roles of SVP of product, board members, and chief product officer.

Commentary

E-commerce Is a $341.7 Billion-dollar Industry — Can SMBs Get a Piece of the Pie?

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Small businesses can close the gap between online and offline commerce with some hard work and adherence to a smart strategy. Here are a few tips to get you started.

Brands, Meet the Data Amplifiers

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Data amplifiers distribute and publish your data to a broader audience than you could ever do on your own — what I call the “network effect.” Your brand becomes more visible because your business data becomes more open and accessible to the influencers who are in a position to help customers find your business.

Retailers Shift Focus to Offline Affiliate Marketing

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Location analytics represent the new battleground in retail, but imagine if you could apply the same analytics for online attribution to offline purchases. Offline affiliate marketing does just that, giving retailers the tools to analyze data from in-store purchases similar to what they can do for online purchases.

Latest Posts

Case Study: Hotel Attracts Luxury Travelers with Guest-Facing Mobile Tech

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As London’s boutique Lanesborough Hotel began what would become a 19-month, multi-million dollar refurbishment in 2014, executives started looking for strategic ways to appeal to guests with luxury tastes. To go along with the newly renovated rooms, which reopened in July, the team decided to add a technology component that would be unlike anything travelers had ever experienced.

Street Fight Daily: What Dorsey’s Twitter Gig Means For Square, Google to Roll Out ‘Now on Tap’

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Jack Dorsey’s Dual CEO Role Raises Questions for Square (New York Times)… Now on Tap, Google’s Mobile Search Trojan Horse, Is Out of the Gate (Recode)… Pinterest Expands Buyable Pins to More Ecommerce Platforms, Reaching Thousands of Merchants (TechCrunch)…

Connecting the Local-Mobile Economy, One Step at a Time

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Hyperlocal, mobile, on-demand contextual commerce enabled by buy buttons within mobile apps — that’s the new string of buzzwords making the rounds at industry conferences. The market reality: It’s going to take a while for this string to play out in the connected local economy. A key reason is that even as mobile disrupts search, most marketers and merchants can’t expect to get their own app on a majority of users’ home screens.

The Struggle to Save Local News Is Not Doomed

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The current state of local news in the technology-driven information age continues to be a hotly debated topic in industry circles. There’s more consensus around the grim prospects for local print media, and more debate about the outlook for independent local news sites. Understanding where the future lies for local news requires a thorough parsing of both positions.

Street Fight Daily: How Surge Pricing Could Affect Retail, Walgreens’ Mobile Approach

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Uber-Style Surge Pricing May Catch on with Retailers (Forbes)… Why Walgreens Is Partnering with Postmates and Betting Big on Mobile (LinkedIn Pulse)… Kroger Tests ‘Smart Shelf’ Technology (Indianapolis Star)…

NinthDecimal’s Staas: Programmatic Will Become a Strong Opportunity for Small Business Owners

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“One of the challenges is a lot of the tools around the ecosystem have not really been built to scale for the small business owner, and they still require a lot of sophistication in understanding how to buy and sell media. The opportunity is in looking at how some of these platforms are evolving. I think programmatic will become a very strong opportunity for the small business owner,” said NinthDecimal president David Staas about shifting trends in location-based marketing and audience targeting.

Raise Report: Thumbtack, Premise, Ibotta Score Big funding

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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 Thumbtack, Premise, and Ibotta.

LBMA Podcast: Eatsa Removes Waiters from the Restaurant, Coke-moji Happiness Experiment, Oscar Mayer…Matchmaker?

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On the show: Eatsa removes waiters from the restaurant; Coke-moji Happiness Experiment; Oscar Mayer is your new…matchmaker?; Fujitsu partners with iProximity; Panama does location-based video sharing; Goodwill’s goBIN. Plus, news from Thinknear, Starbucks, Canadian Tire, and Mobiquity and Mobeam, and Rob’s new gig as VP of marketing at Foko.

Street Fight Daily: The Future of Search, Button’s Big Mobile Commerce Partnerships

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Looking Ahead: The New Search Landscape (Search Engine Land)… Mobile Startup Button Inks Airbnb, Ticketmaster Deals to Link Bookings to Other Apps (Recode)… Microsoft’s New Windows Phone App Lets You Recommend Home Maintenance Services to Friends (The Next Web)…

Four Local Marketing Strategies to Boost Same-Store Sales

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Company success often rises and falls on the ability to deliver same-store sales increases, so multi-unit brands spend a lot of energy managing around this core metric. But it’s difficult to drive local success at scale with a one-size-fits-all approach. Here’s a list of four creative strategies (and associated tactics) that local stores can implement to boost their overall performance.