News and Analysis

Research Highlights Shifting Social Media Dynamics for Brands

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Rachael Samuels, social media manager at Sprout Social, hopes that brand marketers who look at the research come away with a greater understanding that social cannot be approached with a one-size-fits-all mentality, and what works for one industry, or even one brand, may not work for another.

Street Fight Daily: Programmatic Plummets in Europe, The SMB OS Opportunity

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… GDPR Mayhem: Programmatic Ad Buying Plummets in Europe… How Do Consumers Choose in a World of Automated Ordering?… Google Bests Amazon in Smart Speaker Shipments…

Street Culture: Techstars Co-CEO on Coaching Startups to Define Culture

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“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

Mobile Local Advertising: Not Just for Early Adopters Anymore

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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…

It’s Local Media That’s Broken, Not Hyperlocal

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In mid-sized cities across America for nearly 100 years, the daily newspaper was the purveyor of enterprise journalism, the opinion maker and a focal point for advertising. In many cities they were monopolies: they set the pricing for advertising, they promoted and punished political officials, and they decided the news cycle every day. But as digital has overtaken American life, mid-sized American newspapers have not kept pace…

Report: Pureplays Using Legacy Media as a Farm System for Sales Staff

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Local media companies need to do something to protect their digital sales assets or run the risk of losing them to pureplay web companies, according to a new report from Borrell Associates. Pureplays offer starting salaries in the range of $12,500 per year more than their nearest competitors, the local TV stations. The gap between starting pureplay sales people and those who work for newspapers is an incredible $21,000 more…

Latest Posts

Thinknear Launches Scoring Metric for Location-Based Targeting

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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

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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

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technologyGoogle 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

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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…

5 Platforms to Help SMBs Identify High-Value Customers

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In the eyes of local merchants, not all customers are created equal. Frequent customers who spend big and tip well are the gold standard for small business owners. Here are five platforms that merchants can use to identify high-value customers worth targeting…

Street Fight Daily: Apple Building New iBeacon Device, Square Eyes Another Acquisition

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technologyApple is Building a New iBeacon-powered Device, FCC filing reveals (VentureBeat)… Curated Food Delivery Startup Caviar In Talks To Be Acquired By Square For $100 Million (TechCrunch)… Pew: Only 2 Alt-Weeklies Saw Circulation Gains in 2013 (Poynter)…

Designing a New Value Proposition for Consumer Location Data

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In a paper published earlier this month, a group of researchers tried to put a price tag on the personally identifiable information that flows from our mobile devices. The results shine a light on the unique challenges facing companies interested in mining location data, and the divergent paths of two tech companies that have built businesses around that information…

LBMA Podcast: SnapChat Tests Location, MapCo’s Howard Curtis

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Top stories of the week include: Google acquires Skybox Imaging; Aisle411 partners with Walgreens and Google; Robocat’s Thermodo weather keychain; Apple patents location-based security; and Ikea Russia builds a website inside of Instagram;…

Street Fight Daily: TaskRabbit Pivots, Bill Gurley On Uber

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technologyTaskRabbit Pivots, Launches On-demand Service for Cleaning, Handiwork, Moving, & Errands (VentureBeat)… How to Miss By a Mile: An Alternative Look at Uber’s Potential Market Size (Above the Crowd)… Birchbox Is Opening Its First Retail Store, And Here’s What It Looks Like (BusinessInsider)…

Why Retail Will Face the Same Fate as the Media Industry

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Jeremy Rifkin, the prolific author who has served as an advisor to a number of world leaders, believes that the astronomical investments in Uber and Airbnb signal the breaking of a long-held “firewall” that kept the transformative effects of the Internet contained to the virtual world. Here Rifkin discusses why a small reduction in margins could kill traditional retail…