News and Analysis
Raise Report: Cordial, b8ta, Cerebri AI Secure New Funding
Every two or three weeks, we round up some of the biggest fundraises taking place in hyperlocal marketing, commerce, and tech. This week’s edition includes funding for Pared, Puppet, Trax, and Airwallex.
Street Fight Daily: Amazon Is On Pace to Forge a Triopoly; Cracks in Mobile Data Ecosystem
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Amazon Is On Pace to Forge a Triopoly, and Advertisers Should Be Scared… Mobile Marketers Struggle With Data Quality Management… Openings and New Hires at Arrivalist, Lotame, Get Five Stars…
Street Culture: Ibotta’s Growth Teaches CEO to Make Cultural Expectations Explicit
“Younger employees are increasingly looking for mission-driven approaches in their work,” says Bryan Leach, founder and CEO of Ibotta. “They want to go someplace where they will get better and have someone to help them become the best version of themselves.”
Commentary
What Local Media Can Learn From the Royal Birth
Who is “royalty” in your community? It’s something news organizations big and small should know, because these are the people who make things happen — or not happen — in and around you. They are of the 1% that we speak of in the widening “us versus them” debate in our culture today. Their comings and goings can be real news, but their social activities and personal lives can also be news…
With Digital Video, Newspaper Companies Could Disrupt Local TV
Here’s what I think will happen. The local newspapers that are smart are already getting serious about creating video content. Some of them are beginning to figure out how to get that content to consumers via set-top boxes, and they will be the first to experiment with partnering with companies like Aereo instead of fighting them in court…
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…
Latest Posts
Street Fight Daily: Twitter Eyes SMBs, 7-Eleven Creates Venture Arm
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Twitter Learns From Facebook by Revamping Its Advertising Fees for Small Business (Wall Street Journal)… Oh Thank Heaven, Even 7-Eleven Has a Venture Capital Arm (Recode)… What Foursquare’s Looming Data Mean to Advertisers (AdAge)….
How Seattle’s South King Media Grew From Hobby Into Profitable Mini-Net
Southend was long dominated by “legacy” Robinson Newspapers, which last year was forced to consolidate its Southend print weeklies into one subscription product because of what it called “market forces,” but kept its individual community websites. Meanwhile, Scoot Schafer’s independent “pure-play” South King Media is profitable and growing. Street Fight caught up with Schaefer recently to talk about the different elements involved in successful hyperlocal publishing projects…
Case Study: Boxing Gym Uses Mobile Flyers to Attract Crowds
Paul Wade, the owner of Third Street Boxing Gym in San Francisco, is a self-professed technophobe. But noticed an increase in the number of people coming into his gym with smartphones in their hands, and he had a nagging feeling that there could be better ways to promote his live boxing events than the printed posters and flyers he’d been creating with the help of a graphic designer for the past 10 years…
Street Fight Daily: Foursquare’s New App, Facebook Ads Costlier for SMBs
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Can Foursquare Crack Local Search? (New York Times)… Facebook Ads Become ‘Costlier’ Choice for Small Businesses (Wall Street Journal)… Yelp Lied About Review Policies to Inflate Stock Price, Lawsuit Claims (GigaOm)…
Hyperlocal Companies Among 500 Startups’ Latest Batch
Silicon Valley seed fund 500 Startups has announced a new round of startups it will be helping navigate through the tough road to sustainable profitability — and they include a number of brand new companies in local commerce, marketing, and tech. Here are a few interesting hyperlocally focused companies from the latest batch…
5 Pet Sitting Marketplaces in the ‘Sharing Economy’
Americans spent more than $55 billion on their pets in 2013, and a number of hyperlocal startups are looking to capture that puppy fever by creating local marketplaces where pet owners are matched up with people who are willing to take care of their pups while they’re out of town. Here are five hyperlocal pet sitting marketplaces getting in on the action…
Street Fight Daily: Shoppers Flee Stores, Gannett Splits Digital Business
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Shoppers Are Fleeing Physical Stores (Wall Street Journal)… Gannett To Split Print and Broadcast/Digital Divisions (New York Times)… Facebook’s New Video Ads Aren’t Ready for Small Businesses — Yet (Recode)…
As Losses Widen, Groupon Struggles to Redefine Itself
Groupon said Tuesday that losses widened in the second quarter as marketing and sales costs jumped but gross profit remained flat. The culprit, a far less profitable ecommerce business than anticipated, accounted for every dollar of the company’s top-line growth as it struggles to find new footing for its sluggish local deals business…
How the Former CEO of Digg Plans to Win in Local
Earlier this year, Matt Williams, the former CEO of Digg and an Amazon vet, hooked up with a few other former Amazonians to found Pro.com, a local services marketplace that raised $3.5 million from investors that include their former boss Jeff Bezos. Street Fight caught up with him recently to talk about what local can learn from the early days of ecommerce…
8 Ways to Collect More Customer Email Addresses
The desire to add more subscribers to email marketing lists is nearly universal, and the average merchant hopes to increase his or her email list by 28% this year. Here are eight strategies that businesses should consider for collecting more customer email addresses…
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Meta Is Automating Ads, But Brands Still Face a Bigger Problem