News and Analysis

After Nearly Two Years in the Hot Seat, Facebook Feels the Burn

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In its Q2 earnings report, the social giant reported that growth has stalled in the United States and Canada, its most valuable markets. And its overall user growth for the quarter of just 22 million users is the smallest jump since 2011, indicating that a slowdown in revenue growth will likely prove a long-term challenge in the years ahead.

How Hospitality Brands Capitalize on Summertime Social Trends

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Social is becoming an increasingly popular channel for research and an important resource for word-of-mouth recommendations, with 67% of consumers saying that at least half of their searches result in a visit to a business, according to a 2017 survey by ReviewTrackers.

Report: E-Commerce Sites Must Fend Off Looming Challenge from Social Platforms

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The opportunity is ripe for social platforms with the right transactional infrastructure and e-commerce sites with a proper slate of marketing functions to cross into the conventional territory of the other, a new report from video marketing firm Magisto indicates. If e-commerce sites do not go beyond transactions to offer their vendors marketing possibilities, they may lose the market on transactions altogether.

Commentary

How Retailers Can Bridge the Gap With Beacons

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Using beacons, content can be delivered to a consumers’ mobile device that augments the shopping experience and bolsters the relevancy of the merchant’s real-time communications based on the consumer’s location and real-time behavior. As a result, the messaging can be perceived by the consumer less as “marketing” and more as “helpful.”

Shopkeep Founder: Micros/Oracle Deal Won’t Help SMBs

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With its acquisition of Micros, Oracle is affirming its commitment to making, selling, and continually repairing outdated technology that has far outlived its usefulness. This approach, while wasteful, works for big companies with million-dollar IT budgets — but small businesses neither want nor need technology that sits in a room and takes up space…

No, the Amazon Smartphone Isn’t Going to Kill Retail

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The in-store experience provides tremendous benefits to shoppers, and the Amazon Fire phone further illustrates the opportunity to use innovative mobile solutions to improve and influence the shopping experience…

Latest Posts

5 Keys to Small Business Success From 2014

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Given all the hyperlocal solutions aimed at small businesses, it’s no wonder merchants took a varied approach in 2014. Over the past year, merchants have become savvier about online marketing solutions, and as a result, many are now willing to try platforms they would not have been comfortable using in previous years…

Street Fight Daily: TripAdvisor Fined in Italy, Uber CEO Indicted in Korea

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology…TripAdvisor Fined $610,000 in Italy for Failing to Prevent Fake Reviews (New York Times)… South Korea Charges Uber CEO With Breaking Transport Law (Recode)… How The Digital Wallet Will Drive Mobile Commerce in 2015 (ReadWrite)…

Here Are the Top 5 Exits in Local Tech of 2014

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The largest deals came on the public market, where some of the more established firms found late exits and others teamed up with rivals. But the startup scene saw its share of healthy M&A activity as well. Here are the five biggest deals in the local tech of 2014….

The Year in Local Search: A Timeline of the Top Stories of 2014

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The holiday season is a time to contemplate the year gone by, so we’ve rounded up some of the top news stories in local search over the past 12 months. It was a year marked by Foursquare’s rebranding, Google’s new SMB interface, and upgrades from the likes of Apple, Yelp, Yahoo, YP, MapQuest, and Bing…

Street Fight Daily: Starbucks Drops Square, Uber to Patent Surge Pricing

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology…starbucks_square-2Starbucks Drops Square App as Mobile-Payments Battle Intensifies (WSJ)… Uber Moves to Patent the Surge Pricing Its Customers Hate (Skift)… Google Gains Ground on Amazon With Same-Day Deliveries During Holiday (AdAge)

10 Top Location-Based Mobile Campaigns of 2014

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In 2014, the use of geo-data, geo-fences, beacons, ultrasound, even LED lighting and magnetic positioning systems, have coalesced around geo-targeting consumers both outside and inside store locations. We asked the folks at GeoMarketing to look back at 10 campaigns that pioneered in the space in the past year…

Thinknear Chief: ‘No Doubt’ That Consolidation Coming in Mobile Ads

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Loren Hillberg recently took over as General Manager of Thinknear at Telenav, replacing the company’s founder Eli Portnoy. We caught up with him recently to talk about the transition from the entrepreneurial stage of a business to the scaling stage, the future of mobile-local advertising, and the coming wave of consolidation…

Street Fight Daily: Oracle Buys Datalogix, Secret Adds Location-based Sharing

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology…datalogixOracle Buys Datalogix, Beefs Up Digital Marketing Cloud (ZDNet)
Oracle on Monday said it acquired Datalogix, which provides digital marketing data as a service. The deal complements Oracle’s acquisition of BlueKai and rounds out its digital marketing suite. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed, but for Oracle Datalogix is a stocking stuffer that gives it yet another pillar to offer data as a service and another cloud product to sell… Secret’s Relaunch Adds Location-based Sharing (VentureBeat)
The broadcasting of public posts is now split between those from friends and those that are location-based, similarly to Yik Yak, another anonymous mobile app focused on college campuses and local communities… In China, a Rapid Jump to Mobile Advertising (New York Times)…

Openings and New Hires at Dex Media, Yext, Angie’s List, and LocalVox

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Every two weeks, Kelly Benish — who knows practically everyone in hyperlocal — covers some of the latest job changes taking place in this dynamic industry. In this week’s edition, new jobs and hires at Microsoft, Colony Logic, Soleo, PlaceIQ, Fixya, and Placed…

Lessons Learned From the Call Analytics Trenches

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It may be a long time before the true value of call analytics data is fully realized, but I’ve been recording the digital marketing revolution one (often uncertain) hello at a time…