News and Analysis

Drift Releases New Tech to Help B2B Marketers Convert Site Visitors Into Leads

It’s 2018, and if visitors to your site are slapped with forms that need to be filled out manually, those visitors are going to take their business elsewhere. That’s the state of affairs that conversational marketing and sales platform Drift is addressing this week with its new technology, Drift Intel.

Street Fight Daily: Apple’s Intertwined Futures in AR and Maps, Snapchat Is Shrinking

TODAY IN LOCAL & DIGITAL MARKETING… Will Apple Help Assemble the ‘Internet of Places’?… Snapchat’s User Base is Shrinking. Here’s Why… Social Is Getting More Difficult for Content Marketers…

Facebook Announces Slew of Changes to Boost Local Businesses

A couple of weeks after Google announced changes to local event discovery, Facebook is announcing a bevy of updates intended to make connecting with local businesses easier for its 2 billion users. Here’s everything you need to know.

Commentary

The Shifting Line Between Free and Paid Local Marketing Services

The manipulation of organic reach on Facebook is one of many examples of the shifting boundary between free and paid local marketing services. In “pure” local search, that boundary has tended to be relatively clear: look for a local business in your typical IYP and you’ll see sponsored listings at the top of the results page, followed by organic results. But that boundary is likely more clear to those of us who know what to look for than it is to the general user…

Probabilistic Device Matching Isn’t Perfect — But It Works

The use of probabilistic matching or statistical IDs to link multiple devices to an individual is often dismissed based on dubious accuracy. It’s true that the practice will never be 100% accurate, but even taking the conservative estimate at the lower end of this range, probabilistic matching enables marketers to scale their mobile advertising campaigns with reasonable expectations of performance…

Is Facebook Paper the Wake-up Call Publishers Need?

Media companies and publishers need to take a page from Facebook and other fast-moving digital properties. These digital entities are giving readers what they want while using what they know about users to “make a killing” with ads. Publishers who were virtually sidelined by these digital powerhouse companies can now get back in the game by adopting a Zuckerberg move: creating the right conditions and culture…

Latest Posts

Street Fight Daily: New York’s Ad Network, Adobe Bets on Location

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technologyAds Will Fund New York City’s Plan For World’s Fastest Municipal Wi-Fi Network (AdAge)… Adobe All-In with Location-Based Marketing (CIO Today)… Restaurant Discovery Service Zomato Raises Further $60M (TechCrunch)…

Target Flips the Switch on New In-Store Navigation Features

“We want to build mobile experiences that Target guests will love,” Alan Wizemann, VP of product and mobile for Target.com told Street Fight. “We believe the new shopping lists and maps make it easier than ever to shop Target. … We’ve got a lot more mobile innovation to come…”

Why Brand Names Matter Less and Less on Main Street

The “brand era” that gave rise to some of the tentpoles of the American economy may soon come to an end. The web, now reachable wherever and whenever through smartphones, can help consumers answer many of the questions that brand once answered…

Did Apple Just Transform Pay-Per-Call (Without Anyone Noticing)?

OSX Yosemite’s “Continuity” feature has received surprisingly little media attention in general and zero coverage for its implications for call monetization. But it could be a glimpse into the sector’s future.

Street Fight Daily: Uber’s Smear Tactics, Groupon Buys (Other) Swarm

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technologyUber Executive Suggests Digging Up Dirt On Journalists (BuzzFeed)… Groupon Acquires In-Store Analytics And Marketing Startup Swarm Mobile (TechCrunch)… U.S. Mobile Payments Market to Boom by 2019, Research Firm Says (New York Times)…

Pay-Per-Call’s Role in Improving Marketing ROI

Call-generation company Soleo in conjunction with Street Fight Insights released a white paper today about pay-per-call and how it improves marketing ROI by deploying advertising budgets more effectively. The paper, “Pay-Per-Call’s Role in Improving Marketing ROI” covers insights into creating an effective pay-per-call campaign; sourcing and deploying effective research and analytics; and using data to better manage a campaign once launched, as well as how to evaluate potential solutions providers…

The Democratization of Local Commerce and the Future of Physical Exchange

While the analyst community obsesses over the share of spending that physical stores are losing to ecommerce, they overlook the vast transformation in the stores themselves. There’s a deeper shift underway in the way we sell and consume products locally that could have a substantially larger impact on the wider economy…

Street Fight Daily: Airbnb’s Print Magazine, Yik Yak Eyes Big Round

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology…Airbnb Introducing Print Magazine, Pineapple (New York Times)… Yik Yak Is Close To Closing On Roughly $75 Million (TechCrunch)… Uber and Spotify Are Partnering (Recode)…

Can Traditional Retailers Nail Digital Before Amazon Figures Out Brick-and-Mortar?

It was never a question of if, but when. Anyone tracking the retail industry knew the day would come for Amazon to open… ahem… a brick-and-mortar storefront. Now Amazon’s familiar slanted smile logo will hang from a shingle in Manhattan right down the street from Macy’s flagship Herald Square store, just in time for the […]

Apple Pay Doesn’t Have to Kill the Wallet to Be Worth SMBs’ Adoption

More and more, software is influencing the way consumers evaluate the places where the shop in the real-world. As the small business technology ecosystem grows, it is crucial for small businesses to break down any potential barriers surrounding purchase, especially when consumers are offered numerous alternatives including national chains and ecommerce giants.