Commentary
What Legacy Local Media Can Learn From the Red Sox
In advance of 2013, the Red Sox again fired the team’s manager, changed the executive suite, and reinvented the workforce. The new goal: replace high-cost and complaining “superstars” with a talented new group who bought into the new model. The organization became more horizontal and the salary of the team dropped by 20%. Meanwhile, over the course of the year, productivity increased by 40%…
5 Leading Indicators of the Future of Local Search
The local search market is changing. On the buy-side, enterprise advertisers are starting to assert their control, demonstrating that they can leverage large footprints to compete in local with clean distributed data, and accurate claimed citations. Consumers, meanwhile, increasingly want to use their mobile devices for more activities than navigational search, expecting to be able to buy and not only find goods and services nearby. The advancements of local search are evolving so rapidly that a race to control consumer behavior may be brewing between the Davids and Goliaths…
The Government Shutdown and the Local Data Economy
For the most part, local search appears to demonstrate with flying colors the benefits of getting things done in the private sector. Not only is it a self-sustaining and profitable industry; it exhibits a drive to innovate that brings ever-improving services to our desktops and handheld devices at a dizzying pace. Imagine if local directories and apps were run by the same bureaucracy that manages the Postal Service, the IRS, and the Census Bureau. We’d probably still be using phone books. Yet at a fundamental level, governmental authorities still act as objective reference points when it comes to information of interest to the public…
Latest Posts
Street Fight Daily: Square Orders Ahead, StubHub’s Editorial Strategy
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Square Rolls Out Order App, Targets Coffee Shops (Bloomberg)… Stubhub Hires Its First Editor-in-Chief, Looks to Become a Destination For Sports and Music Fans (PandoDaily)… Pull Over, Google Maps: Nokia Here Maps Zooms on to Samsung Galaxy Phones (GigaOm)…
Former Visa Exec Wants Mobile Shoppers to Make the First Move
In the marketing industry, startup types wax poetic about the the power of bluetooth beacons to revolutionize the way we shop. But Dave Wentker, the former director of Visa’s emerging technology division, is questioning whether beacons are truly enough to really change consumers’ shopping habits. Wentker’s company, Tapcentive, has developed a system that lets consumers choose when to receive messaging, content, and deals…
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…
Street Fight Daily: Facebook’s Hyperlocal Ads, Yext Hires for IPO
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology…… Facebook Launches Hyper-Local Ads Targeted To People Within A Mile Of A Business (TechCrunch)… With This Hire, Yext Seems Poised for IPO (New York Business Journal)… San Francisco Legalizes Airbnb (Recode)…
Beacons Do Pose a Privacy Threat — But It’s Not the One You’re Worried About
Earlier this week, Buzzfeed published a scathing report detailing an initiative by outdoor advertising giant Titan to install bluetooth beacons in hundreds of phone booths across New York City. But the report does more to underscore the shortcomings of the local technology industry in explaining the new technology than to expose a new, meaningful threat to the consumer privacy…
Former Apple Geo Exec Launches Curbside, An App for In-Store Pickup
Curbside, a new company founded by the former head of Apple’s geo team, Jaron Waldman, launched a mobile commerce app yesterday in San Francisco that allows users to find products that are in stock at multiple stores in their area, purchase them with their mobile device and then pick them up at the location without ever getting out of their car…
Street Fight Daily: Video Spending Thrives, Uber Hires Former Lyft COO
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology…… Video Growth Drives Display Advertising Spending To $37.6 Billion In 2019 (Forrester)… Uber Hires Former Lyft COO VanderZanden to Spur International Growth (Recode)… Will Apple’s “Location Warnings” Be Educational Or Scary? (MarketingLand)…
Why a Former Current TV Exec Believes in the Economics of Local Video
Street Fight recently caught up with Mark Goldman, the former COO of Current TV and current chief of online video platform ExtendTV, to talk about missed opportunities with Current, why he believes digital will not kill television (completely), and where he sees the local video market heading in the next few years…
Street Fight Daily: Square Raises $150M, New York’s Secret Beacons
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology…… Square Raises $150 Million at a $6 Billion Valuation (New York Times)… Hundreds Of Devices Hidden Inside New York City Phone Booths (BuzzFeed)… Marriott Settles FCC Complaint About Blocking Rival Wi-Fi Networks (Recode)…
Why Entrepreneurial Publishing is Catching Fire in Local Digital
Traditional journalistic publishing models are collapsing right before our eyes as entrepreneurs — often with no standard journalistic background — are starting highly innovative and financially promising community news websites in many metro markets. In this Q & A, the University of Florida’s Randy Bennett explains how and why this new model of publishing is starting to replace the old models exemplified by the corporate businesses of “legacy” newspapers and broadcasters…
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