News and Analysis
Happy Returns Expands Into College Market
Startup Happy Returns, based in Santa Monica and founded by alums from HauteLook and NordstromRack.com, offers a way for shoppers to return e-commerce purchases at real-world kiosks. Beginning this fall, Happy Returns will be setting up kiosks—which it calls “Return Bars”—at five campuses around the country to capitalize on the returns generated by back-to-college online shopping.
Commentary
It’s Official: The Newspaper Industry Has Given Up on Newspapers
In the past couple of weeks, three of the major legacy media companies announced they were splitting their companies into separate-but-unequal broadcast and print ventures. The decisions by Gannett, E.W. Scripps and Tribune to divide their once “synergistic business models” into separate and very distinct businesses indicate that we are now at the beginning of the end-of-the-end for this industry…
Mobile Local Apps: To Bundle or Not to Bundle
Facebook last week made the contentious move to force its iPhone and Android app users to “fast switch” to the Messenger app for all future messaging. The outcome will be worth watching for anyone developing mobile apps. Local media players are increasingly faced with decisions about app functionality. That includes whether to unbundle features to specialized apps (think gas prices), or to federate within one…
The Impact of Google’s Local Update Is Still a Developing Story
Google seems to be experimenting with driving more traffic to its local competition, meaning that it’s more important than ever for a business to secure its presence across a broad base of directories. The value proposition of local SEO does not change in a fundamental way, given that Google has long used citation consistency as a prominent local ranking signal…
Latest Posts
Why Call Tracking Works Across a Variety of Local Marketing Contexts
Call tracking and analytics can be implemented across any media channel — although online search, directories and context-based marketing are especially important avenues. The key is to include a tracking component to measure and capture post-call, offline information and behavior in order to identify real advertising value…
Dallas Morning News Bets Ranch on Its Local/Hyperlocal Strategy
For the Dallas Morning News, local and hyperlocal — increasingly digital but with a continuing and strong print presence — define the future of the 130-year-old A. H. Belo Corp. newspaper. To find out more about what the DMN is doing to plan for the local digital future, we talked recently with several executives in charge of that strategy…
Street Fight Daily: Uber Paves Way to IPO, GM Sells Ads In Cars
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Uber Closes $1.6 Billion in Financing (New York Times)… GM Is Beaming Advertisements Into Your Car (Fast Company)… Sensory Marketing Is the Next Frontier in Mobile Advertising (AdAge)…
How Google Wallet’s Ex-Product Lead Plans To Tell Retailers What You Buy
The company offers retailers a chance to link the mountain of data, available about consumers online, to the growing, but relatively opaque, credit card data collected by retailers in stores. Marc Freed-Finnegan, the company’s chief executive, spoke to Street Fight recently about the shift toward a more intelligent brick-and-mortar retail experience…
Street Fight Daily: Amazon Folds Mobile Wallet, Yahoo’s Search Bump
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology…Amazon To Fold Its Mobile Wallet App Beta On Wednesday (CNet)… Yahoo Sees Big 1.6 Percent Monthly Search Share Gain At Google’s Expense In New ComScore Data (Search Engine Land)… NYC City Council Showdown on Airbnb Rentals on the Agenda (Skift)…
Why Chilean Hyperlocal Network Mi Voz Succeeds Where Patch Failed
Over the past decade, the Chilean community news network Mi Voz has transformed the way news is produced, consumed, and sustained in the often neglected small cities and towns outside of the country’s capital, Santiago. In the process, it has also proven that a local news network can be profitable…
Street Fight Daily: Twitter Buys ZipDial, Porch Nabs $65 Million
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology…Twitter Buys Indian Mobile Marketing Startup (Time)… SoftBank Emerges As The Biggest Challenger To Uber (TechCrunch)… Marketers Claim to Be More Mobile Than We Might Think (MediaPost)…
The Importance of Responsive Web Design for SMB Sites
It’s critical for local businesses to have a beautiful site that doesn’t just scale down to low resolutions, but also looks great on all devices — from a 27” desktop display to a “smart” refrigerator, and every tablet, phablet, and phone in between. That’s why for the majority of local businesses, responsive design is the best mobile strategy…
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