News and Analysis

Facebook Announces Slew of Changes to Boost Local Businesses

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A couple of weeks after Google announced changes to local event discovery, Facebook is announcing a bevy of updates intended to make connecting with local businesses easier for its 2 billion users. Here’s everything you need to know.

Report: 34% of Ad Impressions Placed on Low-Quality Sites

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Reputable brands have pushed back hard against having their ads appear alongside content that goes against their values—for example, advertising running alongside articles or videos about how to complete the Tide PODS challenge—but Gartner L2’s research shows that the pushback hasn’t been effective enough, and the industry still has work to do.

Street Fight Daily: Facebook Releases Slew of Local Features, Here Challenges Google Maps

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TODAY IN LOCAL & DIGITAL MARKETING… Facebook Announces Slew of Changes to Boost Local Businesses… Here Attacks Google Maps with New Freemium Website Plan… Alexa Users Are Reportedly Not Buying Anything with Their Voice…

Commentary

The Benefit of Beacons Is in the Past and the Future — Not in the Present

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The discussion around bluetooth beacons and other proximity messaging technologies has largely centered on real-time advertising. But the benefit of beacons extends well beyond the “here and now” scenario; the devices create new opportunities for marketers to build deeper audience segmentations and more advanced location targeting that we’ve barely begun to explore…

Should Local Advertising be Bracing Itself for On-Demand?

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For the local advertising industry, which is still withstanding ripples with its shift from print to digital, why not look ahead to on-demand? Just because expectations among SMB owners have been conditioned towards moderate turnaround doesn’t mean an SMB wouldn’t be absolutely thrilled to have their newly purchased website and SEM package running tomorrow instead of next month…

How to Maintain a Rational Social Marketing Strategy in a Confusing Landscape

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Small business owners may find themselves perplexed by the variety of opportunities to engage socially with consumers. Of course, it would be premature to suggest that any SMB needs an Ello marketing strategy. But there’s an advantage to be gained in keeping your marketing strategy attuned to the groups actively pursuing interests relevant to your business…

Latest Posts

Here’s How Marketers Are Using Mobile This Super Bowl

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In an age when marketers can reach a hundred million people each day by lunchtime, the draw of the Super Bowl’s 184 million viewers has lost some of its luster. But Madison Avenue is focusing on another number: $14.3 billion. That’s the amount that consumers plan to spend on food, beer and other goods for the big game…

How Hyperlocal Tech Is Reviving Brick-and-Mortar Sales

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Retailers have a plethora of customer data and technologies at their disposal which can be effectively combined to personalize the brick-and-mortar shopping experience. By tapping into the rich analytics and capabilities of these cross-functional offerings, they can be well positioned to regain market share..

Street Fight Daily: Facebook Ditches Clicks, Village Voice On The Block

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technologyHere’s How Facebook Plans to Help Brands Find Out When Their Ads Actually Worked (AdWeek)… Village Voice Parent Company Will Explore Sale Of Papers (Poynter)… Apple Maps Connect For Small Businesses Expands Beyond The U.S. (9to5Mac)…

Zomato Lays Groundwork for a Stateside Push — With Yelp in the Crosshairs

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Last week, Zomato bought UrbanSpoon in a move that thrust the Indian restaurants-only reviews company into the North American spotlight. We caught up with Deepinder Goyal, the company’s chief executive, to talk about why he thinks food search is shifting to discovery…

As SMB Investment in Digital Increases, So Does the Need for Better Performance Metrics

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With all the noise in local marketing, how can SMBs reliably answer the ROI question? How can they increase the signal-to-noise ratio in their marketing metrics even as they increase their investments in online marketing? A good place to start is by focusing on one metric, above all else: Lead Acquisition Cost…

Street Fight Daily: Beacons Retarget Ads, Mobile Wallets Eye Loyalty

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology…Now Advertisers Can Use Beacons To Make The Shoes You Were Looking At Inside A Physical Store Follow You Around The Internet (Business Insider)… The Next Step for the Mobile Wallet? Loyalty Programs (Wall Street Journal)… Let’s Stop Laughing At Groupon (Fortune)…

Why Instacart’s $2 Billion Valuation Doesn’t Spell Bubble

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No story has rekindled concerns about valuations like the ascent of Instacart, a local logistics firm whose recently raised $220 million at a $2 billion dollar valuation. We caught up with Instacart’s Nilam Ganenthiran to talk about how a delivery network could reshape the competitive landscape of local grocery markets…

Local Marketing a Rising Priority for National Brands

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A new research microstudy commissioned by leading local marketing platform Balihoo and Gatepoint Research found that national brands across a variety of industries understand that driving consumers to locations or local agents is critical to their overall marketing strategy — and that local marketing efforts outperform national campaigns…

6 Ways SMBs Can Use Mobile to Reach Targeted Audiences

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Whether or not a mobile campaign proves successful for a small business hinges less on the content of the campaign than on whether the right audience is being targeted. In many cases, it’s up to hyperlocal vendors to educate SMB clients about the possibilities in mobile audience targeting. Here are six takeaways that vendors should focus on in those discussions…

Street Fight Daily: Expedia Buys Travelocity, Private Equity Eyes Digital First

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technologyExpedia Buys Travelocity, Merging Two of the Web’s Biggest Travel SitesCerberus, Apollo Bidding for Digital First Media (Capital New York)… For Digital, SMBs Need Somebody—and Money—to Lean On (eMarketer)…