News and Analysis
Amazon’s Dash Buttons Have Met Their End. Does Their Demise Truly Signal Failure?
Dash buttons were met with detractors right from the get go. Some called out the “hideous” design, while others lambasted Amazon for creating $5 buttons that would inevitably end up in landfills. But at Amazon, the Dash button initiative isn’t considered a failure. Rather, the project was designed to get consumers more comfortable with the “connected home” concept and the idea of shopping through devices other than desktop computers and smartphones.
WeQ Launches Influencer Agency, Backing up Influencers with Analytics
Global mobile advertising firm WeQ announced on Tuesday that it’s launching an agency dedicated to influencers, aiming to pair the analytical power of a broader ad tech firm with the new possibilities for branding offered by the influencer sector of the digital marketing industry.
Foursquare Launches Hypertrending, A Next-Gen View of the Hot Spots in Town
Foursquare announced on Friday, coinciding with the ten-year anniversary of its launch at SXSW, a new feature called Hypertrending that shows users the most popular places where people are meeting up around them.
Commentary
Weighing the Local Promise of Bots and Conversational Commerce
Are bots the future of the internet? Maybe, maybe not; like the buzz around Google Glass in 2013, we’re in the midst of a moment when it’s hard to tell the difference between hype and technological breakthrough.
In Google/Facebook Duel, SMBs Are the Real Winners
With Google’s recent changes, Facebook may now offer small business advertisers a better way to reach low-funnel shoppers — those currently in-market for a product or service, not just those vaguely searching for the category. Google’s move could drive many businesses into Facebook’s arms.
The Real Problem With Duplicate Data
Duplicate information — or information that is exactly like something else — isn’t the problem. The problem is publishing inconsistent data (or publishing two different listings) that are referencing the same location.
Latest Posts
The Price of Free Listings
When the Yellow Pages directory came out once a year, if your business’ phone number was printed incorrectly, you were in trouble. It was the same with local business listings on the internet, except that instead of one or two books, there were thousands of websites carrying your bad data. This added up to a serious headache for multi-location brands and a serious opportunity for solutions providers that could bring order to the free business listings chaos. Here’s a look at how listings management has evolved.
5 Programmatic Ad Buying Platforms for SMBs
Programmatic buying has a reputation for being geared toward large-scale advertisers buying high volumes of impressions. But more vendors are developing programmatic solutions aimed directly at the SMB market. Here are five platforms that give smaller advertisers the ability to plan, buy, and target digital ads in real-time.
Street Fight Daily: Amazon Gets Creative with Delivery, Dissecting Starbucks’ Mobile Success
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Amazon Tested Package Delivery by Newspaper Trucks (Wall Street Journal)… Why Starbucks’ Order and Pay Is More Than Milk Froth (TechCrunch)… IAB: First Half 2015 Ad Revenues $27.5 Billion, Search Captures 50 Percent (Search Engine Land)…
Street Fight Daily: Yahoo Signs a Search Deal with Google, MapQuest Launches Brand Refresh
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
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
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
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
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
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
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.
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Meta Is Automating Ads, But Brands Still Face a Bigger Problem