News and Analysis

Street Fight Daily: Google Helps Brands Close Path to Purchase, Placed Expands to TV

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Google Gives Brands Ads, Data to Compete on Price, Local Inventory… Facebook Will Ban Sellers of Shoddy Products… How Viacom Uses AI to Predict the Success of Its Social Campaigns…

Report: Social Attracting Most Widespread Investment from Advertisers, Topping Search

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Move aside, Google. According to the results of a new survey, released by the advertising management firm Marin Software just this morning, nine-in-10 advertising professionals are investing in social media in 2018, beating the next most popular channel—YouTube/Google Display—by more than 10 percentage points.

Street Fight Daily: Google Expands Into Fresh Food Marketing, Snap Expands Commerce for Brands

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Google Enters Deal with Carrefour to Sell Food Online in France… Snap Expands Commerce for Brands Within Stories… Report: Social Attracting Most Widespread Investment from Advertisers, Topping Search…

Commentary

The Local Search Shadow Economy

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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

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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…

Latest Posts

WPP Mobile Exec: Location Already ‘Not Special’ in Ad Tech

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In a conversation this week, Michael Lieberman, chief executive North America at WPP’s Joule, discussed the copy-cat syndrome among mobile-local ad tech, how brands have ditched geo-fencing, and why influencing consumers’ impulse purchases might be the next big growth market for digital marketing dollars…

How Community Involvement Can Pay Off for Local Publishers

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Commuter traffic tie-ups and convenience store holdups can’t be the heart of a community news product. “Duty” coverage is still part of many sites’ content menu, but, by itself, it can’t build a solid relationship with community. The trick is to empower users “to take action to improve their communities”…

Street Fight Daily: The ‘New’ Foursquare, Apple Eyes Mobile Wallet

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technologyThe Next Age of Foursquare Begins Today (Verge)… Apple’s Mobile Wallet Talks Heat Up (Information)… New Google Maps for Android and iOS Takes a Jab at Foursquare (Mashable)…

Study: The Problem With Mobile Payments Isn’t Awareness — It’s Utility

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A new study from Thrive Analytics shows that the sluggish growth of mobile wallet initiatives is largely a product — not a marketing — problem. Among the 32% of respondents who used a wallet app, usage was, for the most part, intermittent…

Conference Notebook: Navigating a Future For Indoor Mapping

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In a world overflowing with data, it’s ironic that the last bastion of opacity — the place about which businesses know the least — is also the place where we spend the majority of our money: the physical store…

Street Fight Daily: Amazon’s New Wallet, Linkedin Buys Bizo

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technologyPassbook Redux: Amazon Copies Apple’s Underwhelming Digital Wallet (Pando)… LinkedIn Makes Another Deal, Buying Bizo (New York Times)… For Its First Google Glass Effort, EBay Adapts Its RedLaser Product Finder App (TechCrunch)…

How SMBs Can Create Comprehensive Local Marketing Strategies

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When it comes to creating marketing strategies that include two or more hyperlocal solutions, many local merchants don’t even know where to begin. Here are five strategies that SMBs should consider…

Street Fight Daily: Yahoo Buys Flurry, Urban Compass Raises $40M

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technologyYahoo Acquires Flurry to Bolster Mobile Offerings (New York Times)… Urban Compass Raises Money at $360 Million Valuation (Bloomberg)… Airbnb Drops Homejoy From Cleaning Trial, Handybook Remains On In Three Test Markets (TechCrunch)…

Yelp, Foursquare, and the Downsides of Mobile-First

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In an era where the “mobile-first” motto borders on dogma for tech companies, the virtues of the desktop internet often are overlooked. While Yelp continues to benefit from desktop search, mobile-first Foursquare has struggled to sustain the explosive growth it saw early on — partly because its influence on the web ecosystem remains relatively weak…

Mapkin Wants to Put Community Into Local Navigation

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How many times have you missed a turn when using a GPS device, or been uncertain that you even understood the directions? Mapkin a Cambridge-based startup, aims to fix that. Mapkin’s mission is to provide an improved GPS-app experience that’s “as human as possible” using nuanced navigation provided by locals…