News and Analysis

After Downgrading Publishers, Facebook Explores New Ways to Boost Them

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We all remember the seemingly apocalyptic early 2018 announcement that Facebook would downgrade publishers in favor of foregrounding posts from users’ family and friends. Less discussed are the various changes Facebook has made since that announcement to give publishers on its platform a fighting chance.

With SimpleOrder Acquisition, Upserve Digs Into Back-House Operations

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In a year that’s been marked by consolidation across the hyperlocal marketing space, Upserve’s recent acquisition of SimpleOrder should come as no surprise. It mirrors another hyperlocal acquisition announced just this week: full-suite marketing company Cheetah Digital’s purchase of loyalty specialist Stellar Loyalty.

Street Fight Daily: Facebook Updates Ad Measurement Practices, Mobile Audiences Skyrocket

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TODAY IN LOCAL & DIGITAL MARKETING… Facebook Updates Its Ad Measurement Arsenal With New and Revised Video Metrics… Mobile Audiences Soar as Advertisers Struggle to Keep Up… With SimpleOrder Acquisition, Upserve Digs Into Back-House Operations…

Commentary

What’s in a Swarm? Making Sense of Foursquare’s Split

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It’s hard to envision now, but it could be that a decoupled discovery and recommendation service will be just what Foursquare needs to scale its dataset beyond entertainment and to encourage users to improve the quality and accuracy of venue information. These developments would turn Foursquare into a viable competitor to data aggregators like Infogroup and possibly to Google Maps itself…

Facebook’s Path to Dominating Mobile (Local TBD)

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Facebook Audience Network will apply Facebook’s audience targeting to third party apps, such as those using Facebook Connect for log-in authentication. The beauty of such an off-site network is that it uses Facebook’s data and positioning to continue milking demand for mobile ads, without killing the cow…

How Hyperlocal Publishers Can Take Advantage of the Data Gold Rush

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The sources of the explosion of big data, retail benefits and opportunities for journalism are well known. Perhaps less so are the benefits for hyperlocal publishers of embracing this trend. Here are five things to consider when exploring how to reap the benefits of the data explosion…

Latest Posts

Serviz CEO: Uber-like Service Providers Will Begin to Displace Local Search

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The on-demand service spun out from ReachLocal has snagged another $12.5 million in funding to expand beyond Los Angeles, adding to $2.5 million raised earlier this year. We spoke with CEO Zorik Gordon to talk about the investment climate for local commerce and the implications of these innovations for the local search community…

Can Mobile Help TV Networks Track In-Store Visits? PlaceIQ Thinks So

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Among the various media, television has remained relatively unaffected by the Internet. Marketers still spend billions on television advertising, and brands expect little measurement or performance in return. But that’s changing, and the big advertisers — often, the large retailers who sell mostly offline — now increasingly want proof of value…

Street Fight Daily: Samsung’s Apple Pay Competitor, Foursquare Partners With Twitter

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology…Samsung in Talks to Launch Apple Pay Competitor (Recode)… Twitter And Foursquare Are Partnering To Improve Location In Tweets (Business Insider)… Next for Yext? Digital Presence Service Buys Dutch Startup InnerBalloons (Recode)…

New Report Suggests Brands Remain Ambivalent About Local Search

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A new Forrester report suggests that a large swath of national marketers still struggle to understand the role of local search in a national marketing strategy. The complexity of the local search industry, the report argues, has created unnecessary barriers for large marketers to invest in both paid and organic search initiatives…

Changelane Offers an Oil Change in an App

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Bringing a car in for a tune-up or oil change is hardly on anyone’s list of favorite things to do. Changelane, a Minneapolis–based startup, aims to take the pain out of car maintenance by bringing mechanics, or technicians as Changelane calls them, to car owners…

Street Fight Daily: Yelp’s New Business App, Foursquare on the iPad

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology…Yelp Introduces New App For Business Owners With Push Notifications (Marketing Land)… Foursquare’s iPad App Is Finally Here (Mashable)… Uber Responds to Senator Franken’s Privacy Concerns (New York Times)…

Social Studies: Are ‘Follows’ and ‘Likes’ Right for All SMBs?

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Social media simply isn’t right for the vast majority of local businesses. Even with its extremely low out-of-pocket-costs, social marketing takes a tremendous amount of ongoing effort and diligence to have any hope of generating what a local business would consider to be results…

Handicapping 2015’s Mobile-Local Happenings: 5 Areas to Watch

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At the crest of a new year, several trends signal what we can expect to see in mobile and location-based media. Next year we’ll see the mobile ad market continue to grow, we’ll see local continue to be Uber-fied, and we’ll see mobile social sharing go local as well…

Street Fight Daily: Facebook Dumps Bing, Consolidation in Ad Tech

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Facebook Dumps Bing, Will Introduce Its Own Search Tool (TechCrunch)… 2014 Was an M&A Bonanza for the Ad Tech World (Wall Street Journal)… Tech’s Push To “Disrupt” Workers Is A Legal & Social Timebomb (GigaOm)…

Case Study: How a Hardware Store Measures Hyperlocal Marketing Success

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From flash sales and local delivery, to social promotions, email marketing, text message customer service, and even print newsletters, Cole Hardware uses it all. The San Francisco hardware store takes a more-is-more approach to hyperlocal marketing…