News and Analysis

Some of London’s Top Retailers Call for a Sales Tax on ‘Largely Online’ Rivals

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Under the banner of The New West End Company, the several-hundred-strong collective of some of the U.K. capital’s top retailers is lobbying for a 1% sales tax on primarily online retailers to parallel the property-linked taxes they already pay.

Openings and New Hires at Arrivalist, Lotame, Get Five Stars

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Every two weeks, Street Fight rounds up some of the latest hires and new openings in the hyperlocal marketing, tech, and media industries. This week’s roundup includes hires and openings at Yelp, Hootsuite, and dataxu.

Raise Report: Cordial, b8ta, Cerebri AI Secure New Funding

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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 Pared, Puppet, Trax, and Airwallex.

Commentary

As Digital Media Gets ‘Horizontal,’ It Acts More Like Local Businesses

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Local businesses are the most suited to life in the networked world, because they already deal with people directly, and often on a first-name basis. To the extent that local businesses have learned to do this, they can teach the rest of the business world how to behave in our increasingly collaborative environment…

Mobile Is Huge — But Two Key Elements Could Slow Its Growth

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We in the media think we’re in the information business, when the reality is that we’re very much in the advertising business, and advertising is in disruption right now. In their effort to influence and produce results, marketers are simply unable to demonstrate even a modicum of restraint when it comes to the line between useful and nuisance.

Is Content King in Local Too?

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In the pantheon of buzzwords overtaking pitch decks and CMO-speak, “content marketing” is the new darling. The term has legitimate grounding to be fair, but like “long tail” and “web 2.0” in days past, its overuse precedes it. Content marketing also isn’t anything new — it’s been done for years, albeit under the ethically challenged “advertorial” rubric among other flavors. Now it’s new, improved, and hitched to en vogue terms like “native.”

Latest Posts

Street Fight Daily: SK Telecom Buys Shopkick, Facebook Launches Atlas

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technologySK Telecom Agrees to Acquire Shopkick (Wall Street Journal)… With New Ad Platform, Facebook Opens Gates to Its Vault of User Data (New York Times)… OpenTable CEO on How Its Game Changes Within Priceline (Skift)…

Openings and New Hires at YP, Hailo, Google, and LivingSocial

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Every two weeks, Search Influence’s 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 Advance Visibility, Hearst, Cross-Post, Placed and more…

Why Marketers Need to Consider Context — Not Just Audience

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In a Street Fight webinar Tuesday sponsored by Skyhook Wireless, Aaron Strout of marketing agency W20 Group and Skyhook’s Mike Schneider discussed the growing role of contextual targeting, and outlined a few steps that brands can use to create meaningful mobile experiences. …

LBMA Podcast: Google Outside, Urban Airship, and Thinknear’s Eli Portnoy

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On the show: Geotargeted ads to help The Times Newseum; Weve is dead; Pigeonly’s Photopigeon; MoodMedia rolls out presence; and the strategy behind Macy’s committing 4000 stores to Shopkick…

Street Fight Daily: FiveStars Raises $26M, Postal Service Eyes Grocery Delivery

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technologyFivestars Raises $26m to Build Up its Digital Loyalty Program (GigaOm)… Postal Service Seeks to Extend Grocery Deliveries (Wall Street Journal)… The Newsonomics of Auctioning Off Digital First’s Newspapers (Nieman Journalism Lab)…

Will Local Media Consortium Save Lee From Knife’s Edge?

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Lee Enterprises is meeting its Chapter 11 debt obligations, recently stretched out debt payments at lower interest, and has cut expenses by $285 million — albeit at cost to editorial quality at the local and community levels. But with the company likely having done much of the cost cutting available, the pressure is on to keep increasing digital ad revenues…

5 Local Marketplaces for Housecleaners

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Marketplaces aimed at providing consumers with easy ways to quickly find and book local housecleaners and home services providers are heating up, with frontrunners like Handy and Homejoy enjoying major investments from well-known venture firms like Revolution (led by AOL co-founder Steve Case and Groupon chairman Ted Leonisis), Google Ventures, and Redpoint Ventures. Here are […]

Street Fight Daily: Pro.com Raises Another $14M, Uber Talks to Regulators

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technologyBezos-Backed Pro.com Raises Another $14 Million to Help Renovate Your Home (Businessweek)… Uber Open to ‘Debate’ With European Regulators Over Ride-Sharing Rules (Wall Street Journal)… Bringing Tablets To Restaurant Tables Nationwide Nets E la Carte $35 Million (TechCrunch)…

In Navigating Supply and Demand, Groupon Hopes for New Life

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During a presentation at BIA/Kelsey’s Leading in Local event in New Orleans Tuesday, Dan Roarty, vice president of local commerce at Groupon, positioned the company’s deal marketplace as one part of a much more ambitious effort to create a platform that connects local supply and local demand well-beyond the confines of an email blast…

Selling to Small Businesses: Getting Your Pitch Past the Gatekeepers

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Having better conversations with gatekeepers is one way to improve the sales process. Most inquiring sales reps tend to ask a gatekeeper when the decision maker will be available and then quickly end the sales call. This is a waste of a great opportunity to gather valuable intel. A gatekeeper can be your unwitting scout, giving you the information you need to better serve your prospective client…