News and Analysis
Street Fight Daily: Facebook Feels the Impact of Its Scandals; GrubHub Acquires LevelUp
TOP STORIES IN DIGITAL MARKETING… At Last, Facebook Feels the Impact of Its Errors… GrubHub Acquires Payments and Loyalty Company LevelUp for $390 Million… Top Lesson for News Sites in SF Innovation Tour: Identify Users and Win Them Over One by One…
After Nearly Two Years in the Hot Seat, Facebook Feels the Burn
In its Q2 earnings report, the social giant reported that growth has stalled in the United States and Canada, its most valuable markets. And its overall user growth for the quarter of just 22 million users is the smallest jump since 2011, indicating that a slowdown in revenue growth will likely prove a long-term challenge in the years ahead.
How Hospitality Brands Capitalize on Summertime Social Trends
Social is becoming an increasingly popular channel for research and an important resource for word-of-mouth recommendations, with 67% of consumers saying that at least half of their searches result in a visit to a business, according to a 2017 survey by ReviewTrackers.
Commentary
Why Local Marketers Need to Start Thinking About Their Instagram Strategy
Instagram presents an unparalleled opportunity to build and share a brand — to show a different side by leveraging this highly visual medium. Plus, the rate of customer engagement is off the charts compared to other social channels. What most marketers don’t realize, though, is that Instagram is also a local marketing channel. The reason for this knowledge gap is that, unlike Facebook and Twitter, Instagram is very difficult to manage natively…
Selling Search to Small Businesses
It’s no secret that national brands are investing heavily in local marketing and small and medium sized businesses (SMBs) are feeling the increased competitive pinch. After all, there are only so many people looking for a given product or service in one’s neighborhood. But while national brands will likely continue to dominate TV, print and radio advertising, digital marketing offers SMBs a rare opportunity to compete with national brands on equal footing…
What Local Publishers Can Learn From Starbucks
Publishers shouldn’t think about “what thing” they should do to make money, but rather “what experience am I delivering and how can I extend that experience thoughtfully?” If something adds value for readers, adds value for advertisers, and strengthens your other efforts then you should be doing it today…
Latest Posts
Street Fight Daily: Square Orders Ahead, StubHub’s Editorial Strategy
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Square Rolls Out Order App, Targets Coffee Shops (Bloomberg)… Stubhub Hires Its First Editor-in-Chief, Looks to Become a Destination For Sports and Music Fans (PandoDaily)… Pull Over, Google Maps: Nokia Here Maps Zooms on to Samsung Galaxy Phones (GigaOm)…
Former Visa Exec Wants Mobile Shoppers to Make the First Move
In the marketing industry, startup types wax poetic about the the power of bluetooth beacons to revolutionize the way we shop. But Dave Wentker, the former director of Visa’s emerging technology division, is questioning whether beacons are truly enough to really change consumers’ shopping habits. Wentker’s company, Tapcentive, has developed a system that lets consumers choose when to receive messaging, content, and deals…
The Benefit of Beacons Is in the Past and the Future — Not in the Present
The discussion around bluetooth beacons and other proximity messaging technologies has largely centered on real-time advertising. But the benefit of beacons extends well beyond the “here and now” scenario; the devices create new opportunities for marketers to build deeper audience segmentations and more advanced location targeting that we’ve barely begun to explore…
Street Fight Daily: Facebook’s Hyperlocal Ads, Yext Hires for IPO
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology…… Facebook Launches Hyper-Local Ads Targeted To People Within A Mile Of A Business (TechCrunch)… With This Hire, Yext Seems Poised for IPO (New York Business Journal)… San Francisco Legalizes Airbnb (Recode)…
Beacons Do Pose a Privacy Threat — But It’s Not the One You’re Worried About
Earlier this week, Buzzfeed published a scathing report detailing an initiative by outdoor advertising giant Titan to install bluetooth beacons in hundreds of phone booths across New York City. But the report does more to underscore the shortcomings of the local technology industry in explaining the new technology than to expose a new, meaningful threat to the consumer privacy…
Former Apple Geo Exec Launches Curbside, An App for In-Store Pickup
Curbside, a new company founded by the former head of Apple’s geo team, Jaron Waldman, launched a mobile commerce app yesterday in San Francisco that allows users to find products that are in stock at multiple stores in their area, purchase them with their mobile device and then pick them up at the location without ever getting out of their car…
Street Fight Daily: Video Spending Thrives, Uber Hires Former Lyft COO
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology…… Video Growth Drives Display Advertising Spending To $37.6 Billion In 2019 (Forrester)… Uber Hires Former Lyft COO VanderZanden to Spur International Growth (Recode)… Will Apple’s “Location Warnings” Be Educational Or Scary? (MarketingLand)…
Why a Former Current TV Exec Believes in the Economics of Local Video
Street Fight recently caught up with Mark Goldman, the former COO of Current TV and current chief of online video platform ExtendTV, to talk about missed opportunities with Current, why he believes digital will not kill television (completely), and where he sees the local video market heading in the next few years…
Street Fight Daily: Square Raises $150M, New York’s Secret Beacons
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology…… Square Raises $150 Million at a $6 Billion Valuation (New York Times)… Hundreds Of Devices Hidden Inside New York City Phone Booths (BuzzFeed)… Marriott Settles FCC Complaint About Blocking Rival Wi-Fi Networks (Recode)…
Why Entrepreneurial Publishing is Catching Fire in Local Digital
Traditional journalistic publishing models are collapsing right before our eyes as entrepreneurs — often with no standard journalistic background — are starting highly innovative and financially promising community news websites in many metro markets. In this Q & A, the University of Florida’s Randy Bennett explains how and why this new model of publishing is starting to replace the old models exemplified by the corporate businesses of “legacy” newspapers and broadcasters…
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