News and Analysis

Flytedesk Empowers Advertisers to Reach Coveted Audience: College Students

Millennials, college kids, 18–24’s—whatever advertisers may choose to call them, they are the most desirable demographic for companies large and small, according to Alex Kronman, founder and CEO of flytedesk, which aims to connect advertisers of all sizes with that coveted audience.

Street Fight Daily: Why Amazon’s Pursuing Pharmacy (and Everything Else); Programmatic Hurdles Ahead

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Amazon’s PillPack Deal Gives It Access to Sensitive Health Data… The Programmatic Transparency Challenges That Still Must Be Solved… Google Shows Preference for Quicker-Loading Mobile Pages…

food truck

How Food Trucks Can Leverage Location Data to Optimize Sales

“Food truck owners can increase sales with more accurate projection models that leverage location data from both traditional sources, like census and point of interest datasets, [coupled] with new streams, like transactional and foot traffic data,” explains Santiago Giraldo, an urban scientist at CARTO.

Commentary

It’s Local Media That’s Broken, Not Hyperlocal

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…

Report: Pureplays Using Legacy Media as a Farm System for Sales Staff

Local media companies need to do something to protect their digital sales assets or run the risk of losing them to pureplay web companies, according to a new report from Borrell Associates. Pureplays offer starting salaries in the range of $12,500 per year more than their nearest competitors, the local TV stations. The gap between starting pureplay sales people and those who work for newspapers is an incredible $21,000 more…

Local Video Copyrights in the Age of Online Virality

We need to find a way to attach revenue-producing messages to videos, so that the Web can do its thing without hurting the incentive for local media companies to create such videos in the first place. And I’m not talking about attaching 30-second prerolls. It can be done, and we need to talk about it. The Web is not TV…

Latest Posts

Why Retail Will Face the Same Fate as the Media Industry

Jeremy Rifkin, the prolific author who has served as an advisor to a number of world leaders, believes that the astronomical investments in Uber and Airbnb signal the breaking of a long-held “firewall” that kept the transformative effects of the Internet contained to the virtual world. Here Rifkin discusses why a small reduction in margins could kill traditional retail…

With Acquisitions, Brooklyn’s Corner Media Grows Into a Regional Cluster

Publisher Liena Zagare’s independent Corner Media network in Brooklyn has added three established community news sites in the borough to grow into a cluster of seven sites in a market of 1 million people. Street Fight recently caught up with Zagare to learn more about what her two acquisitions will mean for their neighborhoods and her company…

Street Fight Daily: Yelp’s Case Against Google, Urban Airship CEO Resigns

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technologyLeaked Documents Show How Yelp Thinks It’s Getting Screwed By Google (TechCrunch)… CEO Of Startup Urban Airship Leaves Company After Being Accused Of Sexually Assaulting His Ex-Girlfriend (BusinessInsider)… Finding Ways to Use Big Data to Help Small Shops (New York Times)…

Unmanaged Local Listings Hurt Consumers and Businesses Alike

Google Maps and its competitors have become the most important pathways to brick and mortar businesses outside foot traffic and word of mouth. As one recent case indicates, an accurate Google Maps listing can be a matter of life or death for a local business. The company needs a stronger and more concerted effort to enlist the help of business owners to address this problem…

6 Ways to Personalize Mobile Ads Without Violating User Privacy

Global mobile ad spending increased to $17.96 billion last year, and it’s on pace to rise another 75.1% in 2014. But in order for mobile advertising to continue growing at such a rapid rate, one issue has to be addressed — privacy. Here are six strategies for personalizing mobile ads without violating user privacy.

Street Fight Daily: Yodle Files for IPO, RetailNext Raises $30M

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technologyMarketing Software Company Yodle Files for IPO (Reuters)… RetailNext Raises Another $30 Million To Track In-Store Data (TechCrunch)… Lyft Expands Its Car Hailing Service to New York (New York Times)…

6 Marketing Automation Tools for Small Businesses

Small business owners have enough on their plates, without having to manually manage repetitive marketing tasks. Here are six marketing automation systems that local merchants can use to build smarter local marketing campaigns…

Assessing Yelp’s New Messaging Functionality

Yelp recently rolled out a new feature that allows consumers to send and receive instant messages and interact with local businesses that have claimed their business page. While this isn’t groundbreaking, it does put “social customer service” front-and-center on the reviews site…

Mobile Media Summit Chicago Speakers Announced

The third-annual Mobile Media Summit Chicago is on July 29th at the exclusive Mid-American Club. The summit will bring together the biggest names in advertising and marketing to discuss how mobile is changing the media mix for hundreds of senior agency, media, brand and publisher executives. Click for more, plus a Street Fight discount…

Street Fight Daily: LivingSocial CFO Departs, New Features for Swarm

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technologyLivingSocial CFO to Depart; New CEO Due Soon (Recode)… Foursquare’s Swarm iOS App Gets Mayor Leaderboards, Easier Sharing, and More (The Next Web)…
88% Of Consumers Trust Online Reviews As Much As Personal Recommendations (SearchEngineLand)…