News and Analysis
Retail as a Service: Amazon will Create (and Destroy) with Cashierless Checkout Solution
Mike Boland: The innovation including and surrounding cashierless checkout goes beyond payments to affect a broader set of functions like supply chain, inventory management, and store layouts. It’s like a retail toolkit in a box, with cash-flow friendly pricing, à la SaaS. You may have heard of it: It’s called retail as a service (RaaS), and it could transform the next decade of retail. Amazon will lead the way.
Digital Ad Trends to Watch in 2019, Mobile to Account for 71% of Digital Ad Spend
Programmatic SSP Pubmatic released on Tuesday morning an elaborate report detailing digital ad trends to watch in 2019. The highlights include a look into how mobile, video, and of course programmatic itself will continue to evolve in the coming year, reshaping the way brands reach customers.
Location Data Industry Gets Huge Wake-Up Call on Monday
Platforms, brands, and vendors benefiting from the reams of location data used to hit consumers with highly targeted ads should be paying attention to a change suggested by Google and Facebook’s appearances before government authorities, a New York Times exposé out Monday, and most importantly the impending arrival of GDPR-like legislation in the United States: 2019 will be the year privacy actually matters, posing a potentially devastating threat to the status quo of the location-based data and marketing industries.
Commentary
Did Apple Just Solve Deep Linking?
One of the coolest things to come out Apple’s September product event was 3D Touch, which lets users indicate levels of intent based on how hard they press apps and links. Beyond the gadgetry of 3D Touch, one thing hasn’t been said: This is essentially deep linking, an area that will be a key battleground in local. 3D Touch could preempt the deep linking dilemma by peeking deep within other apps — a lighter and more elegant solution I’m calling “deep previewing.”
How the Marketing of SMB Marketing Services is Evolving
The marketing of digital marketing services was once built on guarantees of leads, new customers, clicks, and the like. But when it comes to promoting small and medium-sized business (SMB) marketing products and solutions, the rhetoric and tactics have shifted. The new direction is more consultative and driven by content.
Executive Survey: What’s Hot and What’s Not in the Connected Local Economy
Preliminary results from our forthcoming executive survey suggest that industry players are investing the most in mobile, followed by data and analytics. Respondents indicated that mobile marketing and managing company websites were the biggest challenges for local merchants, along with SEO and listings management. More complete survey results will be revealed at our upcoming Street Fight Summit in New York City.
Latest Posts
INFOGRAPHIC: A Quick, Deep Dive Into Local Pharmacies
Here’s a view of the U.S. pharmacy industry – not the drug makers but the local distribution networks made up of thousands of retail pharmacies. These pharmacies help drive the nearly $260B in “Drug Store Revenue.”
On Building Local Products With Merchants in Mind
In local, particularly, it seems important to underscore something for new startups: to really think about and envision and understand their customer base…
Street Fight Daily: Groupon’s Apple Watch App, Amazon’s Store on Wheels
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Groupon’s New Apple Watch App Alerts You To Nearby Deals, Lets You Buy From Your Wrist (TechCrunch)… YP’s Split and Local.com’s Bankruptcy: Ain’t No Big Deal (Street Fight)… Shyp Nabs Foursquare’s Varun Shetty To Run Business Development (TechCrunch)…
YP’s Split and Local.com’s Bankruptcy: Ain’t No Big Deal
YP’s split and Local Corp’s bankruptcy filing might strike you as huge events. But for the greater local search industry, I don’t see these as particularly big milestones…
Placed Adds New Partnerships to Attribution Network
Placed, which connects ads to in-store visits, has announced the addition of several new partners to its network of over 80 companies that use the service to measure the impact of advertising on offline store visits…
Survey: Consumers Want More Online, Mobile Interaction With SMBs
A survey from Yodle finds that customers gravitate toward local businesses for better-quality service and are increasingly open to interactivity with them, a combination that provides immense opportunities for growth…
What Questions Do You Have About the State of Local Marketing?
Earlier this month we released the third edition of The Local Merchant Report. With expert analysis of survey responses from over 500 local merchants highlighted in charts and graphs, it’s a really deep dive. Here are some of the questions we asked…
Street Fight Daily: Instagram’s Location Search, YP Spins Off Print
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Instagram Update Adds Search By Location, Revamped Explore Section For Trending Photos (The Next Web)… YP To Spinoff Print Yellow Pages Business, Stay Focused On Digital (Marketing Land)… Here’s What Facebook Wants Mobile Ads to Look Like (Recode)…
Sense360 Launches Developer Platform to Unlock Mobile Sensor Data
Since leaving Telenav last fall, hyperlocal veteran Eli Portnoy has been working hard on a new startup called Sense360, which is looking to analyze data from users’ smartphone sensors to give additional context about where they are and what they’re doing. We caught up with Portnoy recently to talk about the platform, which officially opened to developers this morning…
6 Mobile Pre-Ordering Tools for Restaurants
Using mobile technology, vendors are now helping diners recapture the time they spend waiting for the food they’ve paid for to be brought to their tables, while also improving operational efficiencies for partner restaurants. Here are six examples of apps that use mobile pre-ordering functionality…
Street Fight’s Big 3
Street Fight Columns
Street Fight Categories
AI Won’t Fix Advertising – It May Scale Its Chaotic Nature