News and Analysis
Street Culture: Techstars Co-CEO on Coaching Startups to Define Culture
“I think that culture is one of the few problems that you have to address before they’re problems,” says TechStars co-founder and co-CEO David Brown. “If you’re struggling to figure out how to grow sales, you can wait until sales are in trouble and still turn it around. But if you wait until you’re in trouble with culture, it’s really hard to turn that boat.”
Commentary
Two (Big) Things Preventing Local TV’s Collapse
The concept of network content distribution through local affiliates is being challenged by the Web. Local broadcasters are middlemen in the delivery of network content to the masses, and that was fine in a world absent horizontal connectivity. So it would be easy to assume downstream trouble for local broadcasters. But while there’s quite likely much of that ahead, it won’t totally kill the industry. There are two enormous roadblocks standing in the way.
The Local Search Shadow Economy
We know that there exist a great number of businesses in our local communities that service a variety of needs at their clients’ homes or business locations. Aside from specialized services like Angie’s List and Service Magic, there are few local search outlets that serve potential clients or service providers well in terms of their ability to connect a need with the appropriate provider…
Mobile Local Advertising: Not Just for Early Adopters Anymore
Over the past few years I’ve done some axe-grinding about the lack of location targeting in mobile advertising — and the fact that desktop ad strategies have largely been ported over to the small screen, particularly among large brands and agencies. But in recent months we’ve started to see some of those habits break down, beginning with newer companies in mobile that don’t have to “unlearn” anything to get there…
Latest Posts
Meet Cups: Endless Coffee for $45 a Month
The third biggest coffee chain in New York isn’t a chain at all. It’s Cups, an Israeli app that wants to turn the city’s independent coffee shops into Netflix-style subscription service. The app offers subscribers unlimited coffee, tea, or espresso at a growing number of small coffee shops across Manhattan and Brooklyn…
5 Platforms That Connect Online Campaigns to Offline Results
A number of major digital and data players are beginning to realize the importance of making this attribution connection, and they’re snapping up platforms that connect the dots between offline data and online marketing. Here are five examples of offline-to-online data platforms that tie the results of digital marketing campaigns to in-store transactions…
Street Fight Daily: Snapchat Adds Location Filters, Yelp Opens API
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Snapchat Adds Location-Based Photo Filters (VentureBeat)… Yelp Liberates Its API To Box Out Foursquare And Google (TechCrunch)… Clear Channel Brings Outdoor Ads to Life On Smartphones (AdAge)…
Order Ahead, Confusion at Counter: Square’s New App, and the Problem of Leading From Behind
A clumsy experience with Square’s new app points to a deeper challenge facing the tech industry as it takes aim at the way we buy and sell goods in the real-world: technology companies, in all their glory, can only lead from behind. As companies like Square look to not only automate existing behaviors, but introduce new ones, the gatekeepers to the future of retail are on the main streets and in the malls across America.
Thinknear Launches Scoring Metric for Location-Based Targeting
Location-based advertising is more popular than ever, but the mobile ecosystem is littered with inaccurate data. That’s why Thinknear, the mobile advertising wing of Telenav, has unveiled Location Score Tags, a new free tool that measures the quality of the location data used in across a campaign.
951% ROI—YogaWorks Reaps Big Rewards with Perkville
YogaWorks was looking for a customer rewards program that would work well with its existing studio management software, MINDBODY Online. They wanted to reward member loyalty, incentivize behaviors that are beneficial to the company, and increase engagement with the brand. They wanted to see real ROI. Perkville delivered dramatic increases in retention, membership tenure, new members, social engagement, all the while narrowing platform costs and the cost of goods for rewards…
Street Fight Daily: Google Maps Eyes Yelp, Nextdoor Adds Business Lead
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Google Maps Added One Of Yelp’s Best Features (BusinessInsider)… Nextdoor Hires Disney’s Christa Quarles as Chief Business Officer (Recode)… Model Number for Apple’s Mystery iBeacon Device May Hint at Upgrade to Existing Hardware (AppleInsider)…
Why Yelp Is Steadily Becoming a Force in Local Data Aggregation
Unlike traditional aggregators like Infogroup, Acxiom, Neustar Localeze, and Factual, which provide basic listings for a very broad range of something like 20 million businesses in the U.S., Yelp is primarily focused on popular businesses — especially reviews of, and deals at, those businesses…
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The Road Ahead: What Autonomous Cars Teach Us About Marketing Automation