News and Analysis

Street Fight Daily: Facebook Delivers Much-Needed Ad Context, The Numbers on Reputation Management

TODAY IN LOCAL & DIGITAL MARKETING AND MEDIA… Facebook Gives Advertisers More Info on Where Their Ads Are Running… The Quantitative Evidence That Reputation Management Works… AI: The New Force Multiplier for Your Sales Team…

Street Fight Daily: Integration of Listings & Reputation Management; Google Reviews, Yelp, and Antitrust

TODAY IN LOCAL & DIGITAL MARKETING AND MEDIA… Latest Local Marketing Merger Aims for Scale in Critical Listings Management Sector… Yelp, Google Reviews, and Antitrust… Oath Integrates Its Ad Tech Assets—But What About the Verizon Data?…

Raise Report: Factual, Uberall, SOCi Secure New Funding

Every two or three weeks, we round up some of the biggest fundraises taking place in hyperlocal marketing, commerce, and tech. This week’s edition includes funding for Planday, New Knowledge, Launchmetrics, and Uppercase.

Commentary

Raising Social Capital Is a Key to Small Business Marketing

One of the most tangible ways for small businesses, chambers, and trade organizations to build social capital is to raise funds for their community. Crowdfunding opens up a collaboration between the business community (the sponsors) and the nonprofits, by reframing the decision to contribute from management to the crowd…

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

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?

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…

Latest Posts

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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)…

Report: Digital Now Represents 40% of Local Advertising Market

A new report released by Borrell Associates suggests that digital advertising will continue to be responsible for nearly all growth in local advertising in 2015. By the end of the year, the report estimates local digital advertising spending will hit $47.8 billion…

Big Possibilities for Brands With New Facebook Targeting Tool

In October, Facebook launched a long awaited feature for many small business marketers: the ability to reach people nearby. Now big brands are finding ways to to leverage the new Facebook Local Awareness ads — and do so at scale…