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
Local Media Companies Need to Evolve — And Do It Fast
Local media’s traditional big-man-on-campus chest-thumping doesn’t mean the same thing in digital that it does in the analog world. In fact, it’s downright laughable. So what do we do when we hit the wall, when we regularly miss revenue targets, when long term projections keep slipping more and more? So what do we do when we keep hiring more ad reps, only to discover that our revenue-per-rep begins to fall, when the evidence is undeniable that we’ve hit that wall? Here are five recommendations.
Why SMB Marketing Services Won’t Save Newspapers’ Bottom Line
Most newspapers aren’t building new and innovative tools to provide SMB services. Instead they are white labeling offerings from other providers or are connecting their audiences to an existing service. Over time, SMB tools are going to become a commodity. When someone who is still in high school can offer exactly what you are offering, you’re in trouble. With the high cost structures and overhead that newspapers have, being in a commodity business (where margins get pushed lower and lower) won’t prove lucrative in the end…
Why Hyperlocal Is Naturally Suited for Investigative Reporting
A new study by local media research/consulting firm AR&D and Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE) reveals that investigative reporting is a big draw for consumers when it comes to media choice. Sixty-two precent said it was reason enough to follow a particular news organization, and it ranked only behind weather (54% preference) in terms of interest — and that interest is growing. Investigative reporting is plain old reporting. Period. And it begins with getting off the lazy and easy commodity news bandwagon and growing a reportorial spine…
Latest Posts
Street Fight Daily: Facebook’s Ad Strategy, Square Eyes Caviar
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… How Facebook Sold You Krill Oil (New York Times)… Square Said to Be in Talks to Buy Food Delivery Start-Up Caviar (Street Fight)… OpenTable Takes Out Its Wallet for Restaurant Sales Analytics Startup Copilot (VentureBeat)…
Openings and New Hires at xAd, Reply!, AddThis and Newscycle
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 Hubspot, Colony Logic, Local SEO Guide,AdMax Local, PlaceIQ and Signpost…
Case Study: Tampa Restaurant Boosts Business With Mobile Waitlist
By integrating mobile waitlist management platforms into their business operations, restaurants may be able to increase the length of time that guests are willing to wait for tables. This makes it possible to get more customers seated in the average day or night, and ultimately boosts the bottom line for restaurants…
Street Fight Daily: Foursquare Taps Expertise, SEOs Weigh ‘Pigeon’
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Foursquare’s Redesign Will Make Expertise the New Gamification (Pando)… Experts Weigh In On Google’s “Pigeon” Update Aimed At Improving Local Search Results (SearchEngineLand)… San Francisco Airport Tests Beacon Sensors to Guide Blind Travelers (Mashable)…
Outdoor Advertising, a Media Anomaly, Knocks on the Digital Door
Billboards, like most things in our lives, are getting smarter. A report released this morning by PQ Media estimates that digital out-of-home advertising in the U.S. generated $2.37 billion last year, or 32% of the $7.4 billion of the total outdoor advertising market…
Daily Voice Expands Into Roger Ailes’ Territory
The Daily Voice has expanded to Putnam County in the Lower Hudson Valley, creating the regional corporate network’s 42nd site in the affluent suburban New York-Connecticut market. Tucker said Putnam Daily Voice’ was launched “with zero expansion” of staff, which includes eight reporters covering a number of communities in the New York-Connecticut suburbs…
Street Fight Daily: Andrew Mason’s Next Big Thing, Square Bets on Chips
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Groupon Founder’s Next Big Plan: Audio Walking Tours (Businessweek)…Square Bets Big on Next-Gen Credit Card Tech (Wired)… Payments Giant First Data Acquires Gyft in an Effort to Bring Digital Gift Cards to the Masses (Pando)…
10 Years in, Yelp Turns a Profit
Yelp is now in the black. The company beat analysts’ expectations, reporting better-than-expected revenues Wednesday with strong top-line growth and a million dollars in profit for the first time in its history…
The Impact of Google’s Local Update Is Still a Developing Story
Google seems to be experimenting with driving more traffic to its local competition, meaning that it’s more important than ever for a business to secure its presence across a broad base of directories. The value proposition of local SEO does not change in a fundamental way, given that Google has long used citation consistency as a prominent local ranking signal…
Study: Consumers Increasingly Receptive to Mobile Ads
A new study released by xAd and Telmetrics finds that consumer engagement with mobile ads has increased dramatically over the past few years. Nearly 50% of mobile shoppers said that they found mobile ads informative/helpful — up from 22% in 2013. In addition, nearly half of respondents who clicked on mobile ads said they went on to take secondary actions (like viewing a website or searching for additional information)…
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AI Won’t Fix Advertising – It May Scale Its Chaotic Nature