News and Analysis
Macaroni Kid Leverages Local Influencers to Connect Brands to Consumers
“Our secret sauce is our ability to connect brands with consumers on a local level, via authentic local influencers,” says Macaroni Kid co-founder Eric Cohen. “Other media outlets can plug into an algorithm to target an audience. We have local moms telling other local moms the scoop as they hand out samples.”
Commentary
How to Create a Great Vertical Directory
It’s tough for a start-up to break into the top echelon of local search players and become a one-size-fits-all solution like Google or YP. The great opportunity that exists in the space lies in serving special interests or special use cases better than anyone has before. Foursquare and Yelp are highly visible examples of this, but other very successful, vertically oriented directories exist, flying mostly under our radar…
What Do Google’s Enhanced Campaigns Mean for SMBs?
To wildly mixed reactions, Google last week announced a major redesign to its pervasive AdWords SEM platform. Known as Enhanced Campaigns, the redesign will force advertisers to run a single, converged — though conditionally governed — campaign across desktop, mobile, and tablet devices…
After Boom and Bust, How Will the Discount Economy Evolve?
The discount industry experienced 2012 as a major turning point. In the past 12 months, the deal provider landscape shook out even more, with the consolidation of many deals sites and the decline of some industry giants. Given the changed landscape, here are a few predictions about where the local offer and voucher space is heading…
Latest Posts
Street Fight Daily: Yelp Adds Video, Verizon Sells Mobile Ads
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Yelp Is Adding A New Video Feature To Its Reviews (BusinessInsider)… Verizon Looks to Target Its Mobile Subscribers With Ads (AdAge)… Google Plans Low-Cost, High Quality Wi-Fi Networks For Small- And Medium-Sized Businesses (TechCrunch)…
Conference Notebook: Mobile Commerce Without the Wallet
During a conversation at the M1 Summit in New York Tuesday, American Express’s CEO Kenneth Chenault attributed the recent failure of some of the most-hyped mobile payments products to a lack of focus and an inability for these services to equal the established ease of the credit card. But he remained confident that a fundamental transformation in the payments industry was still underway…
Local Mobile Search in U.S. Still Outpacing Other Major Global Markets
We recently culled data from more than 13 million users of our mobile shopping platform in six countries. Not surprisingly, because of its high saturation of smartphone users, the U.S. market reports the highest percentage (60%) of all our search traffic from mobile devices. We expect that to increase as smartphone sales continue to grow…
Street Fight Daily: Investors Bet on Marketplaces, Direct Response Dominates
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Local Services Marketplace Thumbtack Raises $30 Million (TechCrunch)… Direct-Response Tactics Take Majority of US Marketers’ Budgets (AdAge)… Marketers Get On Board the Offline-to-Online Data Train (AdAge)…
At Westfield Labs, Rethinking Retail One Mall at a Time
In 2012, the Westfield Group, one of the largest owners of indoor malls in the world, opened Westfield Labs, a division tasked with developing technology to improve the retail experience. Street Fight recently caught up with Nicholas Cabrera, the division’s SVP of product development, to talk about the role of technology in the physical shopping experience…
Street Fight Daily: Groupon Goes After Square, Apple’s New Retail Plan
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Groupon to Replace Nearly All of Its Merchants’ Cash Registers With iPads (Recode)… Angela Ahrendts’ Plan for the Future of Apple Retail: China Emphasis, Mobile Payments, Revamped Experience (9to5 Mac)… PubMatic Acquires Mobile Ad Server Mocean Mobile (Adage)…
Study: Rampant Data Fraud Poses a Threat to the Mobile Advertising Industry
According to a new report, roughly two-thirds of the location data which mobile publishers pass on to advertising exchanges, and eventually to marketers, is inaccurate. The report, released by Thinknear, the mobile advertising wing of Telenav, found that of the 67% of mobile advertising impressions, which include a latitude-longitude data, only a third can accurately predict the location of a user down to 100 meters…
5 Ways to Track the Effectiveness of a Hyperlocal Campaign
Sixty-four percent of businesses surveyed by Oracle in 2013 said that the ability to track marketing ROI has been the most important change in the marketing world, however the majority of local merchants still aren’t sure how to compare various hyperlocal channels and measure the effectiveness of different types of campaigns. Here are five strategies for doing just that…
Street Fight Daily: Airbnb Tests Local Experiences, Patch Turns a Corner
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Airbnb Quietly Tests Selling Tours and Other ‘Experiences’ (VentureBeat)… Patch, a Network for Hyperlocal News, Turns a Corner (Boston Globe)… PubMatic, xAd Team To Launch Location-Based Programmatic Marketplace For Mobile (MediaPost)…
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