News and Analysis

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.

Report: 34% of Ad Impressions Placed on Low-Quality Sites

Reputable brands have pushed back hard against having their ads appear alongside content that goes against their values—for example, advertising running alongside articles or videos about how to complete the Tide PODS challenge—but Gartner L2’s research shows that the pushback hasn’t been effective enough, and the industry still has work to do.

Commentary

Phone Leads for Local Businesses: The Unsexy Cousin of the Click (Part II)

Beyond bringing in big leads — and SMBs paying handsomely for them — call monetization will be compelled by something else: Opportunity cost. We forecast call volume to SMBs to explode (65 billion by 2016) as a result of increasing mobile usage trends. That’s going to mean a whole lot of calls to answer…

Why Mobile Marketing Needs to Evolve Past Physical Location

In order for location targeting to be effective, marketers must think beyond just physical location or proximity to their store. It means moving beyond the traditional mindset of ‘who’ you are trying to reach to include ‘where are they,’ ‘what are they doing,’ ‘what are their interests’ or even ‘what might their intentions be,’ based on past behavior…

New Location-Based Services Are Poised to Enter the Mainstream

To a surprising degree, the panels and presenters at Street Fight’s Local Data Summit last week in Denver emphasized a similar theme: we’re about to see a plethora of new technology-enhanced real-life experiences centering on ingenious uses of data. The signal feature this time around is an orientation toward experiences situated in a physical context. The question the new technologies will answer is this: “What do I need my technology to do for me now, in this place, at this time, under these circumstances?”

Latest Posts

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.

LBMA Podcast: Factual Teams With EQ Works, Digital Element Partners With Skyhook

On the show: Bionym pioneers wearable payments; Adsquare raises $4.3M; The NHL is testing virtual Dasherboards; Tip.ly makes tipping a visual thing; Clear Channel offering free content in Singapore; Copresence brings peace to Android and iOS sharing; Boxpark does the pop-up mall. Our resource of the week looks at the impact of Apple Pay on Whole Foods…

Street Fight Daily: Google Kills The Carousel, Facebook’s Local Ambitions

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology…Google Debuts New Look For Hotel Booking Ads As The Carousel Disappears (Search Engine Land)… Facebook’s New Privacy Rules Clear the Way for Payments Push and Location-Based Ads (Recode)… Can Tech Companies Solve Their Temporary Labor Problem? (Pacific Standard)…

‘Legacy’ Publishers Make Big Move Into Content Marketing

Local newspapers and TV broadcasters are making a major innovative leap into the digital space that they hope will bring them big bucks from sponsor-funded content. LMC Executive Director Rusty Coats said member companies are confident that the funded content will become “a major source of [their] digital revenue.”

5 Strategies for Leveraging Digital Circulars

Making the migration from print to digital circulars is easier said than done, and many retailers are still left with questions over how best to take advantage of hyperlocal technology in this arena. Here are five strategies for how retailers can leverage digital circulars to their full advantage, during the upcoming holiday season and beyond…

Street Fight Daily: On-Demand’s Labor Problem, Square Drops Free

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology…Handy Sued For Being a Hellscape of Labor Code Violations (ValleyWag)… Square Eschews Free, Starts $29 Pre-Orders For Chip-Based Card Readers (TechCrunch)… HomeAway Integrates Gogobot, Uber and Instacart Into Mobile Services (Skift)…

In First Acquisition, SocialRadar Snaps Up Location Tech Firm

Location analytics startup SocialRadar, founded by Blackboard founder Michael Chasen, has made its first acquisition. The company has come to terms with Gridskippr, a startup specializing in location management and mobile advertising technology for smartphone apps…

Interconnectivity and the Mobile Mind Shift

We hear a lot these days about the massive transition in consumer attention from desktop to mobile devices. That transition is an undeniable reality, but it would be a mistake to assume that it’s just about mobile devices themselves. What the smartphone has done is to enable a change in mental attitude when it comes to the use and consumption of online services…

VIDEO: Hyperlocal Media 2.0 — Events and Email?

The sale of AOL’s local media network, Patch, earlier this year marked something of an end to a lot of the optimism that once surrounded hyperlocal media. As local media veteran Jim Brady says, the category entered the “huddle for warmth” phase of its lifecycle. But a more optimistic tone has begun to return to the industry…