News and Analysis

With SimpleOrder Acquisition, Upserve Digs Into Back-House Operations

In a year that’s been marked by consolidation across the hyperlocal marketing space, Upserve’s recent acquisition of SimpleOrder should come as no surprise. It mirrors another hyperlocal acquisition announced just this week: full-suite marketing company Cheetah Digital’s purchase of loyalty specialist Stellar Loyalty.

Street Fight Daily: Facebook Updates Ad Measurement Practices, Mobile Audiences Skyrocket

TODAY IN LOCAL & DIGITAL MARKETING… Facebook Updates Its Ad Measurement Arsenal With New and Revised Video Metrics… Mobile Audiences Soar as Advertisers Struggle to Keep Up… With SimpleOrder Acquisition, Upserve Digs Into Back-House Operations…

SendtoNews Aims to Guarantee Brand Safety for Advertisers

Publishers like Facebook and YouTube often cause consternation for advertisers over brand safety. Content delivery and advertising company SendtoNews promises to change that state of affairs with its service. “We’re completely brand safe,” said CEO Matthew Watson.

Commentary

Is Newspapers’ Falling Knife Finally Starting to Rise?

Wall Street thinks the long-term decline of newspaper revenues may be near bottom as print losses are close to being outweighed by consumer and digital revenue increases. With Warren Buffet and Jeff Bezos buying into the industry as a long-term play, the broader financial markets are following suit. The newspaper industry is getting some of its most positive signs in years…

Google’s Local Social Conundrum

Google’s attempt at ushering in the Facebook-ization of search, local and otherwise, depends on a major shift in perception and engagement. It may be difficult to bring about such a shift with a “build it and they will come” approach — given the current volume of content, the emphasis on social turns Google’s rich local result set into a desert.

Hyperlocal Execs’ 2014 Predictions (Part Two): Locu, Radius, Placed

As we have for the past couple of years, Street Fight recently asked a number of hyperlocal luminaries to weigh in with their predictions for where local is headed in 2014. We ran the first installment of their responses yesterday — here are a bunch more…

Latest Posts

Street Fight: Ads In Your Uber, Nextdoor’s Treat Map

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology…You Might Start Seeing Ads In Your Uber (Buzzfeed)… Nextdoor’s treat map shows you where to find candy on Halloween (Mashable)… Square Finds Itself Encircled (Bloomberg)…

At GrubHub, a Delicate Balance Between Search and Commerce

Next Tuesday, Grubhub’s president Jonathan Zabusky will join us for a fireside chat at Street Fight Summit in New York. We caught up with Zabusky, who served as chief executive at Seamless prior to the merger, to talk about the state of the company and the evolving local commerce opportunity…

6 Tools SMBs Can Use to Push Mobile Ads

By streamlining the creative and logistical components typically associated with mobile marketing campaigns, vendors are giving small businesses a way to expand their reach and modernize their advertising practices without increasing costs. Here are six solutions SMBs can use to push ads to mobile users…

Street Fight Daily: Google Lets SMBs Respond, Mobile Investment Booms

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology…“Google My Business” App Now Lets Business Owners Respond To Customer Reviews From Their Smartphone (TechCrunch)… Mobile Internet Investment Hits Record $19.2b — Up 232% In Last 12 Months (VentureBeat)… Maker of Apple Pay Competitor Has Already Been Hacked (Recode)…

Holiday Shoppers Will Move Between Online and Offline More Than Ever Before

In two new studies, the Gannett-owned digital marketing company G/O Digital took a look at the capabilities and offerings that will drive shopper behavior during the holidays for national and smaller retailers respectively. According to one, 84% of online shoppers said they planned to use an online channel to help decide where to shop before purchasing a gift in store at a small business…

With Nomi Deal, Brickstream Kicks Off Consolidation in Store Analytics

Brickstream, an in-store analytics firm, has snapped up the New York-based Nomi, an indoor marketing startup founded by a handful of Salesforce alums, in an all-equity deal. The entire 37-person Nomi team will join Brickstream including CEO Marc Ferrentino who will now serve as chief marketing officer for the Atlanta, Ga.-based company…

Wix Buys Its Way Into Online Ordering

Wix, the Isreali-based website builder, has quietly pushed into the wider small business technology market since going public last year. Now the company has acquired OpenRest, a small Israeli-American startup that provides restaurants with the ability to accept orders through a website or mobile app…

Street Fight Daily: Taco Bell’s New App, Sun-Times’ Network Play

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technologyTaco Bell Unveils Mobile Ordering (USA Today)… The Newsonomics Of The Sun-Times National/Local Network Play (Nieman Journalism Lab)… Groupon’s New Product Boss Leaving After Less Than Two Months (Recode)…

In Frozen Yogurt Wars, A Battle for Digital Domination

In a new regular series, a deep-dive analysis of local presence pits Yogurtland against rival Pinkberry, finding that Yogurtland outperformed its smaller counterpart across Google, Facebook, Foursquare and a number of other local search sites. The study shows that Pinkberry has done slightly better on social media, but still struggles among some of the more fundamental elements of local search and discovery…

Mobile Payments Still Facing the Same Big Obstacles

This year has been a turning point in mobile payments, as Square, Paypal, along with Apple and others like SoftCard (formerly ISIS) have all made strides in their digital payment offerings. But three years after starting a now-defunct mobile payments company, I’ve identified three big reasons why we will not be paying with our phone in everyday retail stores for a long time to come…