News and Analysis
Street Fight Daily: Kroger Plans on Driverless Grocery Delivery, Firms Run Afoul of GDPR
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Kroger Plans to Introduce Driverless Grocery Delivery… ‘Everyone Is Breaking the Law’: GDPR Compliance Falls Short… Programmatic Is Evolving Fast. These Five Charts Show the Changes…
How a Proposed California Privacy Regulation Could Impact User Data-Driven Business
If it passes and is signed into law in November, the California Consumer Privacy Act would establish groundbreaking new consumer privacy rights throughout the country. The California act mimics the heavy regulations of the GDPR and could become one of the broadest privacy laws in the nation.
Street Fight Daily: Amazon and Google Announce New Initiatives Focused on SMBs
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Google Introduces Startup Campaigns for Small Businesses… Amazon Plans Startup SMB Delivery Services for Its Own Packages… How a Proposed California Privacy Regulation Could Impact User Data-Driven Business…
Commentary
Why Cars Could Be the Next Big Platform for Local Search
Amid praise and criticism of the flatter design of Apple’s newest mobile operating system, the company quietly introduced a potentially transformative feature in iOS7: iOS in the Car. Pedestrian-friendly cities like New York and San Francisco may prove a fertile breeding grounds for local discovery apps like Foursquare, but it’s the suburban car-bound consumer that presents the biggest opportunity for local technology companies today, including …
The Good and Bad of Local Discovery on Our Summer Road Trip
Greetings from a summer road trip in the Pacific Northwest. Amid games of twenty questions and alphabet animals, we have faced the typical needs of the traveler: shelter, food, gas, and fun. Naturally, we’ve turned to local search, just like the other 31% of leisure travelers (up from 18% in 2010). I’ve written mainly about local search on the homefront and travel is another kind of use case entirely, one that in many ways has been “solved” by existing services — but has it? In our experience, you often have to be creative to get what you need…
Everybody Is a Media Company, So Now What?
The explosive growth of personal media has disrupted everything it touches. The same inexpensive tools that consumers are now using are also available to any-sized businesses, which has the potential of entirely leveling the playing field in consumer goods and services by driving down the cost of marketing. The neighborhood doughnut shop can just as easily make and distribute media as the Kroger Bakery up the street or, by God, even Walmart. We may chuckle today but just wait…
Latest Posts
Street Fight Daily: Google’s Local Algorithm, Amazon’s Square Competitor
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Google “Pigeon” Updates Local Search Algorithm With Stronger Ties To Web Search Signal (SearchEngineLand)… Amazon Set to Launch Square-competitor in August as it Develops Biometric Payment Solutions (9to5Mac)… Car-Hailing Service, Lyft, Reaches Deal to Operate in New York City (New York Times)…
5 Ways to Increase Redemptions of Mobile Coupons
Mobile coupon usage is on the upswing, with 75% of mobile shoppers having redeemed a coupon from their smartphones last year, and 80% saying their perceptions of a retailer would improve if that retailer offered mobile deals. Despite the obvious consumer interest in mobile coupons, however, many retailers — and particularly, smaller merchants — are still struggling to get their footing in this new marketing world…
LBMA Podcast: Bonnaroo’s Beacons, Autograph’s Henry Lawson
Top stories of the week include: Heineken’s @wherenext twitter service; Clear Channel launches its “Connect” platform; Petpace tracks the health of your pet; AdNear teams up with Mindshare for location targeting in Asia; Samsung launches “CentreStage” in BestBuy; Marriott launches LocalPerks; and Birchbox opens up a real-life store in SoHo…
Street Fight Daily: Zillow Eyes Trulia, Facebook and Uber Discuss Partnership
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Zillow Seeking to Buy Rival Property Site Trulia (Bloomberg)… Facebook and Uber Discuss Integration of Car Service Into Messenger (Recode)… LivingSocial’s Losses Narrow in the Second Wuarter (Washington Post)…
Three Months After IPO, Grubhub is Growing — And Profitable
Shares of the company rose 4% Thursday morning as the online ordering firm reported solid revenue growth, and a stronger-than-expected jump in profit during its first full quarter as a public company…
WPP Mobile Exec: Location Already ‘Not Special’ in Ad Tech
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
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
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… The 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
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
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…
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