News and Analysis
Street Fight Daily: The (Walmart) Empire Strikes Back, How Brands Forge Emotional Connections
TODAY IN LOCAL & DIGITAL MARKETING… Inside Walmart’s Rise as a Legitimate E-Commerce Player… Motista Report Indicates What Brands Can Do to Spark Emotional Engagement… Did Ad Blocking Just Flip from Protection Racket to Mobile Marketing Savior…
At CallRail, Community Forums Prove Valuable for Product Development
Community forums—online spaces where consumers and developers can interact and collaborate— are increasingly popular tools for companies hoping to improve their product development and ideation. The strategy is working effectively for marketing tech vendor CallRail.
Street Fight Daily: Uber Cash Burn Narrowing En Route to IPO, CallRail Engages User Base to Drive Product Dev
TODAY IN LOCAL & DIGITAL MARKETING… Uber’s Losses Continue, But Narrow, In Its March Toward an IPO… At CallRail, Community Forums Prove Valuable for Product Development… How Yelp’s Revamped Ad Biz Powered a Great Quarter…
Commentary
Using In-Store Analytics To Counter the Threat from Disruptive Digital Retailers
Online retailers have successfully proven that leveraging analytics drives conversions and improves shopper experience. Indoor analytics provides these same invaluable insights to physical stores, closing the data gap between digital and brick-and-mortar environments…
What’s in a Swarm? Making Sense of Foursquare’s Split
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)
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…
Latest Posts
How Digital Is Destroying the Mechanics of High-Margin Products
The Internet is positioned to transform companies that have been selling over-priced physical products whose absurdly high margins have been hidden from consumers by complicated purchase processes that look a lot like services…
Gilt Groupe Co-founder Tries Her Hand at On-Demand
Earlier this year, Glamsquad, a seed stage startup offering in-home hair and makeup services, brought on Gilt Groupe co-founder and early advisor Alexandra Wilkis Wilson as chief executive. Street Fight caught up with Wilkis Wilson last week to discuss the challenges in merging the data-driven ecommerce approach with the realities of running a real-world service…
Street Fight Daily: Mobile Search To Exceed Desktop, Instacart’s Big Round
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology…… Mobile Search Will Surpass Desktop in 2015 (eMarketer)… Instacart Is Raising North Of $100 Million At A $2 Billion Valuation (TechCrunch)… We Can’t Trust Uber (New York Times)…
At Pinterest, a New Pitch to Small Businesses
Pinterest has managed to carve out a solid domain in a jam-packed social media landscape. Now, it’s time to build a business — and the local market is poised to play a big role, said Joel Meek, the head of the company’s small business efforts, during a BIA/Kelsey event in San Francisco on Thursday…
Openings and New Hires at Niche Media, Balihoo, and YP
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 Yext, SnapRetail, PlaceIQ, eBay, Hearst, and more…
LBMA Podcast: Amazon Home Services, Retail Prophet
On the show: Google takes over Times Square; Drones in TGI Fridays; Shazam goes in-store with Mood Media; Audi’s new car sharing platform; Fujitsu turns light into image recognition. Our resource of the week is 3D printed maps for the blind…
Street Fight Daily: Uber Raises $1.2 Biliion, Yahoo’s Mobile Comeback
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology…… Uber Raises $1.2 Billion, Putting Its Value at $40 Billion (New York Times)… Yahoo to Surpass Twitter in U.S. Mobile Ads (AdAge)… Google Gooses Resellers of Its Biz Apps With 10% Incentive (Wall Street Journal)…
Will The On-Demand Economy Loosen Google’s Grip on Local?
Over the past decade, Google has controlled the way we find and interact with local businesses with an indomitable grip. But will a shift away from the information-based businesses — namely, search and advertising — to more transactional models lead to a change? According to speakers at a BIA/Kelsey event yesterday, that’s a distinct possibility…
YP Study Touts the Effectiveness of Its Search Products
Earlier this week, the 100+- year-old company released new research that found adults who use YP to search online are more engaged in several key ways compared to other searchers. Street Fight spoke with YP’s CMO Allison Checchi recently, who said that the company’s deep roots in local search help drive that behavior.
Street Fight Daily: Amazon Launches Grubhub Competitor, On-Demand and Google
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology…… Amazon Has Launched A GrubHub Rival For Food Takeout & Delivery (TechCrunch)… Apple Mass Transit System For Maps Detailed In New Patent (Apple Insider)… Uber Saw a Small Dip in Growth During Its Bad Press Week (Recode)…
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Meta Is Automating Ads, But Brands Still Face a Bigger Problem