News and Analysis
5 Things to Know About Amazon’s Fast-Growing Ad Biz
Search “Amazon advertising,” and the first webpage you’ll find comes from the e-commerce giant itself. The pitch? In a phrase: “Reach millions of customers who find, discover, and buy at Amazon.” It doesn’t get much more compelling than that. Here are five things you need to know about the most legitimate challenge to Google and Facebook’s digital ad dominance.
Street Culture: SproutLoud’s Reinvention Requires Collaboration
Channel marketing automation company SproutLoud had a circular problem: the turnover was bad, which was bad for employee morale, which was causing more turnover. The company’s internal culture was deteriorating—a point at which many startups have struggled to reset their environments, and a point at which SproutLoud’s leadership team took responsibility.
Street Fight Daily: What to Know About Amazon’s Fast-Growing Ad Biz, Are Publishers Now Like Tech Vendors?
TODAY IN LOCAL & DIGITAL MARKETING… 5 Things to Know About Amazon’s Fast-Growing Ad Biz… Are Publishers Becoming More Like Tech Vendors?… Street Culture: SproutLoud’s Reinvention Requires Collaboration…
Commentary
Apple’s Next Trick: Making the Retail POS Disappear
The idea is to enable shoppers to conduct roving transactions throughout retail stores by scanning items with their iPhones, paying on the spot via iTunes then going on their way. No checkout aisles, no gum-snapping shopgirl, no 15 items or less. It creates a world where the mobile device is the POS…
Consolidation Watch — Where to Look for Deals in Local Tech
The first half of 2013 saw total investment activity, which includes both M&A and private financing, grow from a year earlier, as the number of deals stayed flat but total reported deal value jumped from $5.2 billion to $7.2 billion over the same period. Expect to see more deals — both large and small — in the local space as big firms search for a foothold in the industry and host of maturing startups look for the exit…
Is Guest Blogging Dead? Focus on These Link Building Strategies Instead
While guest blogging used to be a respected link building practice – and still might be okay in some instances – it is now often considered a violation of Google’s quality guidelines. And in the future, Google could penalize websites that accept guest posts if Google believes the business is attempting to gain links without truly earning them. Instead of placing all of your eggs in the guest blogging basket, it is best to focus on authentic link building. Here’s how…
Latest Posts
Is Location More Than a Feature in Mobile Advertising?
The rise of smartphones has created a wealth of location data that marketers on both the buy- and sell-side are desperate to capitalize on. But is location really more than just another targeting mechanism for mobile advertising? That was the question posed to a Street Fight Summit panel Tuesday…
30A.com Is More Than a Website — It’s a ‘Brand’ for the Laid Back
Mike Ragsdale’s 30A.com, serving the Gulf Coast beach communities of Santa Rosa in Northwest Florida, is much more than a website. It’s an “international brand” that includes a digital radio station and a retail operation that sells everything from to T-shirts to beach chairs to beer…
Street Fight Daily: Google Redesigns Maps, Walmart Searches Inside
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology…… Google Maps gets better integration with Uber and OpenTable (Mashable)… Walmart Brings Product Search To The In-Store Experience (Search Engine Land)… Amazon Tries Out Taxi Deliveries In California Cities (CNBC)…
In Building Local Marketplaces, a Choice of Chicken or Egg
The success of Uber and Airbnb have spawned a deluge of startups that have replicated the on-demand marketplace model across a range of verticals. But developing marketplaces locally requires a deft approach to scale that balances a network’s need for liquidity with a startup’s desire for growth…
Investors Bet on Rethinking Old Categories — Not Creating New Ones
During a panel at Street Fight Summit in New York Tuesday, Tige Savage, managing partner at Revolution Ventures, and Dave Ambrose, managing director at Steadfast Venture Capital joined Guardian’s east coast tech editor Dominic Rushe to discuss the growing opportunities — and future challenges — in rethinking traditionally local businesses…
Is Your MVP a Minimum Viable Channel?
“Just because you have product/market fit, don’t raise money until you have validated your channel,” said Closely CEO Perry Evans. “We might have been able to be a successful business — but we shouldn’t have been a business that took venture capital. We couldn’t produce the return the VCs needed.”
Five Hyperlocal Startups to Watch
At the Street Fight Summit on Tuesday afternoon, startup investor and mentor Laurel Touby quizzed five founders about their plans for world domination and developing a viable business model to support it. Here’s what we learned…
Street Fight Daily: Groupon’s Wine Label, Porch Keeps Growing
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology…… Groupon Uncorks Its Own Wine Label (Chicago Business Journal)… Can Porch.com Become LinkedIn For Your House? (Fortune)… For Location-Tracking Startup, a Data-Privacy Odyssey (Wall Street Journal)…
The Rise of Marketing Automation in Local’s Next Act
Marketing automation isn’t just for the biggest companies in the world anymore. Thanks to companies like Booker, Signpost, Shopkeep, and others, small and medium-sized businesses (SMB) have access to the data and the tools to reach their customers in smart, efficient ways while minimizing the hassle on the backend…
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