News and Analysis
Privacy-Forward Search Engine DuckDuckGo Partners with Apple Maps
Making a big splash in privacy, the ongoing story that has dominated location data-based marketing buzz in 2019, DuckDuckGo, the search engine that does not store user data in order to sell pricey ads, announced that it is using Apple’s MapKit JS to power searches. While the search engine’s results are sought out by far fewer users than search industry leader Google’s, the growth DuckDuckGo is experiencing further validates the impression the tech media has practically been screaming about this year: The winds on privacy are definitively changing, and data-driven companies that fail to heed those changes are in for quite a storm.
Foursquare Launches Self-Serve Audience Segments Accessible via The Trade Desk
Having pivoted from a location-centric social app of sorts to a location intelligence platform, Foursquare has positioned itself well to offer brands attributable marketing success and verified data points at a time when concerns about both data quality and privacy are as widespread as ever. Foursquare says it throws out about 80% of the third-party data it consumes, an act intended to preserve the quality of its largely first-party data store.
Loyalty Solution Narvar Acquires Kronos Care, Expands in Europe
Customer engagement and loyalty solution Narvar, which has tripled in size over the last year, announced on Tuesday its acquisition of Kronos Care, a fellow customer engagement startup founded in just 2017. The move will help Narvar conquer the European market, bolstered by the local expertise of the Paris-based Kronos.
Commentary
Rating Street Fight’s 2015 Predictions
At the end of each year, Street Fight invites staffers, friends, and luminaries from the industry to share their predictions for what’s in store for the coming year. Today, we take a look back at some of the predictions for 2015 to see who was on target and who missed the mark.
Street Fight Hyperlocal Analyst Predictions for 2016
With 2015 drawing to a close, it’s time again to look ahead to what we can expect in the hyperlocal space in 2016. This year, we did things a little differently. We invited our regular analyst contributors to 1) weigh in on what they felt would be a “sure thing” in the coming year, 2) offer a prediction on something that might get big (but might not happen), and 3) identify something that hyperlocal marketers and merchants really don’t need to worry about. This is the first of several predictions pieces we will feature this week.
Ad Blockers: One Big Distraction from the Real Issue
In a year of overblown topics, the grand prize goes to mobile ad blockers. The backlash is not only disproportionate to real impact but also has fueled the wrong conversation. Instead of fighting ad blockers — or fueling them in the case of biased reports — the ad industry should ask itself how it got in this position to begin with.
Latest Posts
Street Fight Daily: Crowley on Foursquare’s Future, Google Still Working on Same-Day Delivery
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Groupon Reports Profit but Still Falls Short of Expectations (Wall Street Journal)… Google Puts Exec Behind ‘Buy Button’ in Charge of Express Delivery Service (Recode)… Understanding The Future Of Mobility (TechCrunch)…
Street Culture: Flexibility Helps WeddingWire as It Scales Up
At WeddingWire, an online marketplace serving the wedding and events industry, its expanding employee base is providing new opportunities to fine-tune company policies, according to the company’s vice president of people, Jenny Harding.
Raise Report: Radius, Shopkeep, Stripe Rake in Big Rounds
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 big votes of confidence for Twilio, Yozio, and Little.
LBMA Podcast: Beacons, WeChat and Proximity Messaging with NOD,
On the show: Visor let’s you see what’s happening around the globe; Michigan University opens up MCity to test driverless cars; Beacons + WeChat test from Chow Tai Fook brings in $16M; Hipcamp’s landsharing services. Member news from Canadian Tire, Placed and Wendy’s.
Street Fight Daily: Small-Scale Shipping Firms Are Having a Moment, Jet.com Struggles
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Growth of E-commerce Pushes Funds Into Small-Fry Shipping Firms (Reuters)… Jet.com Runs Into Turbulence With Retailers (Wall Street Journal)… Not Just An App: The Front End Of The Trillion-Dollar, Full-Stack Revolution (TechCrunch)…
Click-to-Calls Are Clicking — And a Lot of the Sales Are Close to Home
A new study from Marchex has put a dollar amount on the business generated when consumers tap on a click-to-call ad or search listing on their mobile device: more than $1 trillion each year.
Prompt.ly Launches App to Help ‘Solopreneurs’ Manage Their (Very) Small Businesses
The platform, which provided scheduling, invoicing, payments and promotions, recently launched a mobile app that helps very small business owners — what CEO Richard Titus calls “solopreneurs” — easily manage their businesses on their phone.
Street Fight Daily: Uber Reportedly Losing Money Despite VC Success, Yelp and ProPublica Team Up
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Here Are the Internal Documents that Prove Uber Is a Money Loser (Gawker)… ProPublica Teams Up With Yelp to Make It Easier to Find Good Local Health Care Services (NiemanLab)… Here’s How Facebook Is Turning Its Local Ad Unit Into a Customer Service Channel (AdWeek)…
5 Dashboards for Monitoring Nearby Social Content
Social media has become a go-to channel for small business marketing, but whether a business is successful at achieving its campaign goals depends largely on strategy. Here are five examples of location-based social monitoring dashboards that merchants can try.
Bringg CTO: Delivering On-Demand Experiences ‘Never Existed Before’
The emergence of on-demand applications has set a new standard for convenience that has left existing companies struggling to keep up with on-demand startups. Street Fight recently caught up with Bringg’s CTO Lior Sion to talk about the market opportunity for local on-demand.
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