Commentary
How Local Search Looks to the Rest of Us
It seems like many recent conversations, webinars, articles, and studies have pointed to the same conclusion: local search as an industry is insufficiently aware of how its products are actually used by consumers and small businesses. Many of the solutions put forward by consumer-facing local publishers and by business-facing services overestimate our appetite for new products and the amount of time and energy we want to spend using online tools…
Local Media’s Data-Driven Future
New value creation is the purpose of media companies today, whether small or big. I genuinely feel sorry for those who believe there is a future in practicing content creation alone. Last week, I called for a strategic makeover. We need a new strategic plan that positions us as more than “just” a media company and behind which our employees can throw their energy. So here are ten things that I view as tactically supporting such a strategy…
Customization Failure: Why Hyperlocal Hasn’t Scaled (Yet)
Most customization that attempts to deliver hyperlocal, or even just local results, falls short. The problem is that they (and we) don’t have much more or better local content and advertising to output than we did in the days before social media and smartphones. A tool is built to operate on a national scale, but the landscape of finding the local information is messy and chaotic, lacking structured data, or consistent geographic coverage…
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Productivity Solution: Free Wireless Internet On-the-Go
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Street Fight Daily: Lay’s Uber Picnic, Google Buys Jetpac
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Lay’s Is Launching an Urban Picnic, Brought to You by Uber (AdAge)… Google Buys Jetpac To Give Context To Visual Searches (TechCrunch)… Amazon’s Square-Like Payment System Could Be Data Goldmine (AdAge)…
As Franchises Bounce Back, A Golden Market for Local Tech Surfaces
A booming franchise sector presents a unique opportunity for hyperlocal firms to blend the scale and reach implicit in the digital marketplace with the granularity and flexibility afforded by mobile, social and other locally-driven platforms. What’s more, the franchise industry — with its unique combination of scale and fragmentation — could help provide a critical stepping stone for vendors to reach the small business market…
Openings and New Hires at the LSA, GoLocalPDX, ElasticBox and UpSnap
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, moves and new openings at the Local Media Association, PlaceIQ, Colony Logic, Sonata, Happenings Media, Ping4 and more…
LBMA Podcast: Mobiquity’s ‘Smart’ Malls, Bing Improves Mobile Targeting
Top stories of the week include: Tinder match-making for dogs; The Traces launches an app; Shazam releases their Resonate platform; The Ninja Sphere for your connected home; Westpac adds augmented reality to banking; Track Toronto tracks the lyrics of the city; Drop closes a small round; Timex has a new non-smartphone connected watch…
Street Fight Daily: Mobile Ad Revenue Hits $19B, Food Delivery Roll-Up
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… IAB: Search And Display Fuel $19.3B In Worldwide Mobile Ad Revenue (AdExchanger)… Delivery Hero Joins The $1B Valuation Club As It Gobbles Rival (TechCrunch)… Yahoo Dusts Off E-Commerce Service to Juice Revenue (Wall Street Journal)…
Report: Mobile Context and Location Services Market to Reach $43.3 Billion by 2019
The mobile context and location services market is set to reach $43.3 billion by 2019, according to a new report. That’s up from an estimated $12.2 billion in 2014. The report also found that by 2019, more than two-thirds of revenues will be driven through highly targeted and contextually aware ad-supported apps…
How Santa Barbara’s Noozhawk Zeroes In on News and Profits
In the increasingly tough world of community journalism — where both readers and advertisers can be fickle and local advertising markets like Santa Barbara are crowded with competitors — Noozhawk succeeds because it’s not in the news business, but “the business of news.” Here, founder Bill Macfadyen explains what that means…
Street Fight Daily: Pinterest Eyes Small Business, More Fuel For Taxi Wars
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Pinterest Expands Self-Serve Promoted Pins Platform To More Businesses (TechCrunch)… More Fuel for Taxi Wars: GetTaxi Raises $25 Million (Financial Times)… The Government’s Upping Its Phone-Tracking Game (Voice of San Diego)…
AI Is Breaking Down Data Silos — Without Breaking Privacy