News and Analysis

Raise Report: Placer.ai, Leap, LoopMe Secure New Funding

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Every two or three weeks, we round up some of the biggest fundraises taking place in hyperlocal marketing, commerce, and tech. This week’s report includes funding for HeadSpin, Mavrck, Entertainment Data Oracle, and ZypMedia.

New Hires at TripAdvisor, Rio SEO, Snap

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Every two or three weeks, guest columnist Geoff Michener rounds up some of the latest hires and openings in local and digital marketing. This week’s roundup also includes openings at Instagram, ThriveHive, and LoopMe.

GroupM Details the State of Digital Marketing’s Hottest Medium: Video

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For marketers looking to capitalize on the video boom, Street Fight has the latest from GroupM’s second annual State of Video report. The highlights include continued difficulties with measurement, emerging options to target effectively across channels, a look at Amazon and Facebook’s quest for domination, and social video’s fallibility and how brands can overcome it.

Commentary

Retail, Restaurants, and Roofers: Where Does On-Demand Work (and Not)?

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A year into the on-demand revolution, the question persists: Where’s it going next? So far, it’s gone into nearly every local vertical, but there are still areas with the right conditions for on-demand models to take root, some of which remain underdeveloped. These include higher-end professional services like lawyers and doctors, project-based work like design and writing, and, of course, SMBs, especially when it comes to local marketing and advertising.

Report: Executive Survey on Hyperlocal Tech and Tactics

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What’s on the mind of technology and marketing suppliers targeting the connected local economy? They’re keen on mobile — perhaps too keen — but struggling with their own companies’ brand awareness. The dichotomy between small businesses and national chains that sell locally is profound, and presents difficult challenges in scaling to support either, let alone both, according to Street Fight Insights analysis.

The Price of Free Listings Revisited: A Hyperlocal Business Perspective

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The proliferation of online directories and directory services has made the local business owner’s life harder. It means more places to manage vital information and more third-party providers that control access to directories. Between the time and effort required to manage aggregators and the volume of citations, few small business owners do it themselves. As a result, the only stakeholders that truly know what information is authentic often are left out of the conversation.

Latest Posts

11 Tools SMBs Can Use to Manage Social Media

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Instead of relying on agencies to manage their social media accounts, local merchants are increasingly using self-management platforms to post on multiple networks, optimize campaigns, and calculate ROI from their social investments. Here are 11 platforms that SMBs can try.

Sponsored Content: What to Know About SEO

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In order to start seeing a positive ROI on their websites, businesses of all sizes need to find ways to drive traffic to their digital properties beyond online listings and digital offers. In most cases, that means relying on search engines to bring in the crowds.

Street Fight Daily: Auto Makers Move to Buy Nokia Mapping, Yahoo’s Q2 Struggles

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Audi, BMW, and Daimler Near Deal to Buy Nokia Mapping Service (Wall Street Journal)… Yahoo Posts Loss, Despite Rise in Its Display Ad Business (New York Times)… Amazon Expands Home Services to 15 Cities in Pursuit of Growth (Bloomberg)…

On-Demand Services: Lessons Learned From the Rise and Fall of Homejoy

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The news that on-demand home cleaning service Homejoy is shutting down at the end of the month wasn’t a big surprise. Here are a few key lessons that stick out in thinking about the company’s trajectory.

Local Publishers: Take Back Control of Your Brand

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The announcement of the Digital News Initiative partnership with Google is yet another step backwards for publishers. If they would just consider how they operated their own platforms before the 1990’s they will realize that Google, Facebook and other current tech platforms owe them nothing.

Street Fight Daily: Jet.com’s Plans to Dethrone Amazon, Instagram’s New Web Search

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Jet.com Will Launch With Amazon Prices Front and Center (Recode)… Instagram Brings Search To The Web (TechCrunch)… Online Takeout Orders Could Overtake Phone Orders in Five Years or Less (Mashable)…

8 Things SMBs Should Consider Before Adopting Mobile Payments

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With 22.6 million people in the U.S. expected to make at least one mobile payment in 2015, merchants of all sizes are feeling the push to start accepting mobile payments. But whether every local business should jump on board is still a matter of debate within the hyperlocal community.

Charlotte Agenda Carves Out Role as Brand Builder, Market Developer

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In April, online city guide Charlotte Agenda arrived onto a shifting Charlotte, N.C. digital scene. The site’s eclectic mix of five-to-ten quick-read, mobile-friendly stories and a distinctive conversational style of commentary is standing out among local media players eager to reach a young audience, but will it prove sustainable?

Street Fight Daily: Yahoo Files for Alibaba Spinoff, Google Scoops Up Homejoy Staff

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Yahoo Files for Alibaba Spinoff, Though Tax Issues Linger (New York Times)… Google Is Getting Into the Home Services Market With Hire of Homejoy Staff (The Next Web)… TripAdvisor Taking on Airbnb? (Travel Trends)…

Openings and New Hires at Drawbridge, Yieldmo, Acxiom and Microsoft

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In this week’s column, Steve Huffman is in as new Reddit CEO, two shifts at Microsoft, a new president of marketing services at Acxiom, and a new VP of Sales at Moasis.