News and Analysis
Report: Education of SMB Marketers a Glaring Hole in Vendor Approaches
The disconnect between how vendors think they are supporting and educating their clients, and how those clients actually feel they are being supported, can be alarming. BrandMuscle’s report found that local marketers are hungry for marketing knowledge, and yet 18% believe they get “little to no support” from the agencies or marketing teams with which they work. Twenty-eight percent say they get “check-the-box support,” which is still insufficient.
Toast Raises $250M, Securing Lead Position in Restaurant Management Software
Restaurant management software provider Toast announced $250 million in additional funding on Monday, valuing the firm at $2.7 billion and cementing its lead position in the SaaS market for restaurants. TCV and Tiger Global Management led the Series E round.
Within 24 Hours, Further Signs That HUD’s Facebook Probe Could Upend Digital Ad Industry
What’s at stake in the Facebook housing discrimination probe and related investigations into Google and Twitter is whether the dissemination of online content—the news, product recommendations, advertising campaigns of all kinds, and entertainment—can and should be permitted on the basis of data collected on users’ personal characteristics and past behaviors. Should organizations, in industries as varied as entertainment, apparel, tech, and education, be permitted to use evolving technology to predict whom ads should target and thus who should see the content promoting Berkeley’s MBA program, the new housing development in Long Island City, or the hip sunglasses Warby Parker will never get me to buy? How does past human behavior and long-term inequality in various groups’ access to privileged resources shape ad targeting and the technology that automates it, and can the tech industry reach beyond those limitations to open up new futures instead of capitalizing on and reinforcing historical distinctions?
The news this week of the Trump administration’s first charges filed against a major tech company is the first step on our path to finding out.
Commentary
Are Community Networks the Final Frontier for Local Publishers?
What if local publishers changed their strategy to focus exclusively on engaging and connecting their community at large? It still requires the great content that they create daily, but also a powerful and relevant search experience for users, more calls to action, and a more native and engaging mobile experience.
How Businesses Can Take Advantage of the Massive Opportunity in Local Data
The difficulty of accessing local data has been changing with the rise of smartphones. We no longer have to guess and approximate where consumers go, because mobile phones can provide data that paints a much richer picture of where, when, and why users visit the world around them.
Online-to-Offline: Is Local’s Holy Grail Within Reach?
The outcome could be the biggest step towards local ad attribution we’ve seen yet. And Facebook’s sheer scale will force more advertisers’ hands — especially those still not doing more to measure activity where $7 trillion in U.S. consumer spending happens.
Latest Posts
The Path to Purchase Is More Mobile than Ever: xAd Study
xAd’s fourth annual Mobile Path to Purchase study indicates the customer journey is more smartphone-dependent than ever, even for big-ticket, high-consideration purchases like cars. “Location is much more than a targeting tactic; it’s a powerful indicator of consumers’ intent and immediacy of needs,” said xAd senior director of global research Sarah Ohle.
5 Tools Local Merchants Can Use to Segment In-Store Visitors
Loyal customers are incredibly valuable to local merchants. A new class of hyperlocal platforms is helping small business owners pinpoint and engage with repeat visitors using a combination of in-store beacons, geo-location tools, and customer segmentation technology. Here are five platforms that enable merchants to track visit frequency and send highly targeted promotions to maximize sales among their most valuable customers.
Street Fight Daily: Facebook’s Q3 Success Fueled by Mobile, Jet.com’s Emergency Fundraising
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Facebook’s Transformation into a Mobile Company Is Complete (Gigaom)… Facing Cash Crunch, Retailer Jet.com Racing to Complete Funding Round (Wall Street Journal)… Hiku’s New Connected Grocery Scanner Lets You Order Groceries from Walmart and Peapod (TechCrunch)…
Q3 Earnings Roundup: Shift to Mobile Presents Commerce Challenge for Yelp, Angie’s List, Groupon
Consumers are spending more time on their mobile devices than ever, a shift that is affecting both traditional and digital businesses. Recent earnings reports from Yelp, Angie’s List, and Groupon indicate that some of these publicly traded local mainstays are handling the transition better than others, particularly the rising challenge to effectively combine content, commerce, and services.
Zenchef CEO: The Restaurant Tech Sector Is Booming
French company Zenchef, which offers an all-in-one marketing solution for restaurants, has taken on the challenge of uniting thousands of European eateries on one platform. With 2,500 customers in France, Spain, and the UK, and plans to expand to Germany, Italy, Portugal, and Turkey in 2016, co-founder and CEO Xavier Zeitoun said “the key in this market is distribution.”
Street Fight Daily: Groupon Replaces CEO, Slack Partners with Lyft and Foursquare
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Groupon Replaces CEO Eric Lefkofsky with COO Rich Williams (Recode)… Slack’s Newest Feature Lets You Call a Lyft (Fast Company)… The Artist Formerly Known as Ecommerce (Venture Inside)…
Case Study: Restaurant Group Takes a Data-Driven Approach to Email Marketing
Data is changing the way large restaurant groups cater to their highest-value customers. Richard Sandoval Restaurants, the upmarket restaurant group with more than 35 locations worldwide, is looking for more strategic ways to use data for customer retention and acquisition. It has started harnessing its email database to make more data-driven decisions using tools like customer analytics and marketing platform Venga.
Constant Contact CEO Touts ‘Distribution Benefits’ After $1.1 Billion Acquisition by Endurance
Endurance International Group, which operates a stable of small business-oriented services, has acquired email marketing giant Constant Contact, in a transaction valued at $1.1. billion. Constant Contact will become the largest brand under the Endurance umbrella. “It’s taking our mission further by getting broader distribution. That’s the number-one rationale for the acquisition,” said Constant Contact CEO Gail Goodman.
Street Fight Daily: Google’s Drones to Hit Skies by 2017, Apple’s New Indoor Mapping App
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Google Plans to Deliver Packages with Drones by 2017 (Business Insider)… Apple’s ‘Indoor Survey’ App Maps Venues Using Radio Frequencies (The Next Web)… Amazon to Open First Brick-and-Mortar Bookstore (Wall Street Journal)…
#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.
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AI Won’t Fix Advertising – It May Scale Its Chaotic Nature