News and Analysis
Street Fight Daily: Google & Apple Boost Local AR, Foursquare’s New Location-Based Creative
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Report: Smartphones, Developer Kits Drive Local AR and Visual Search… Foursquare’s New In-House Agency Will Pump Out Location-Based Creative… Marketers Still Shy Away from Venturing Too Deep into Ad Tech…
Street Fight Daily: Scandal Fails to Dent Facebook’s Growth, AI Biz Expected to Boom
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Increased Facebook Ad Prices Drive Revenue Growth… Gartner Expects the AI Business Market to Grow 70% This Year… Advertisers, Agencies Agree Transparency in Ad Buying Is A Problem, But Disagree on the Blame…
Commentary
Why Location Is Key to Mobile Monetization
As location becomes an ever bigger opportunity in mobile, a few questions are worth digging into further. One of those is how precise that location data is. Another important topic is the way success is measured in a local campaign aimed at driving offline actions, whether a call or an in-store visit…
Social Isn’t Search: Why Apple Should Think Twice About Foursquare
Though the cachet of the Foursquare name might make this idea sound appealing, my sense is that it could only be executed successfully if handled very carefully by Apple. With the prominence already given to socially driven results from Yelp, Apple would risk becoming a search service dominated by social content…
Daily Deals: Still Lucrative for Local Publishers
Given the challenges facing pure-play daily deal companies (and the saturation of news stories chronicling their issues), a casual observer could be forgiven for thinking that the deals space is experiencing a major downturn. Recent studies, however, suggest a more bullish outlook for deals in 2013…
Latest Posts
Shopkeep Raises $25M to Build a Better Cash Register for Indie Retail
The New York-based startup that builds point-of-sale software for mobile devices has raised $25 million in its third round of funding. The new capital thrusts the company to the forefront of a busy pack of upstarts looking to rethink the point-of-sale. It also sets the stage for a drawn-out fight between a handful of well-funded startups, the legacy point-of-sale providers who control much of the market, and a number of other tech giants looking in…
Street Fight Daily: Reddit Targets Locations, Facebook’s Billion Mobile Users
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology.. Reddit Introduces Location-Targeted Promoted Posts (Wall Street Journal)… Facebook Posts Earnings Beat as Mobile Soars Past One Billion Monthly Users (Recode)… Uber Drives for Asian Expansion (Financial Times)…
Yext Says It Will Be Profitable By 2015 — Here’s How
Over the past 23 months, the New York-based startup has silenced critics, turning the listing-synching concept into a cash cow that helped the company generate over $34 million in revenue last year. In an interview last week, Yext CEO Howard Lerman told Street Fight that the company expects to generate $56 million in 2014, and hit $85 million — and profitability — by 2015.
Revenue Flowing Faster to New Marketing Channels, But Integration Is Key
A recent advertising report from the IAB found that U.S. interactive advertising revenues hit an all-time high of $42.8 billion in 2013, with digital exceeding broadcast television advertising revenues ($40.1 billion) for the first time ever. But some brands who are succeeding at hyperlocal are integrating legacy channels rather than eliminating them…
Street Fight Daily: Airbnb Clashes In Court, DeliveryHero Raises $85M
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… New York’s Case Against Airbnb Is Argued in Albany (New York Times)… Delivery Hero Gobbles Another $85M To Fuel A Price War With Just-Eat (TechCrunch)… Facebook’s “Nearby Friends” Must Work Against the Historical Failure of People Discovery (GigaOm)…
Locable’s Aim: To Help Sites Build Community as a Brand
Locable is a network of 50 local and hyperlocal websites that shows its “partners” how to build community around their brand. It does this through an approach it calls “Main Street for the 21st Century.” In this recent Q & A with Street Fight, the company’s co-founder and CEO Brian Ostrovsky talks about what this approach means, and how community sites can position themselves for success…
6 Ways to Improve Business Operations Using Indoor Location Data
In many cases, indoor location analytics platforms take the guesswork out of operations management. Rather than guessing whether expensive in-store displays are increasing conversions, and wondering how dwell times influence sales, retailers can look at the data being spit out by their analytics platforms to find their answers. Here are six ways that businesses can use indoor location tools to improve in-store operations…
Street Fight Daily: Facebook Plans Mobile Ad Network, Apple Readies Payment Push
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Facebook Plans Mobile-Ad Network (Wall Street Journal)… Apple Interviewing Job Candidates for Mobile Payments Push (Recode)… Square Denies Report of Potential Sale (USA Today)…
xAd CEO: Small Businesses Still a ‘Huge, Huge Market’ for Ad Tech
Location marketing company xAd, which started as a search advertising firm five years ago, generated over $65 million in run-rate revenue by the end of last year, half of which came from small and medium-sized businesses. Street Fight recently caught up with the company’s chief executive Dipanshu Sharma to discuss the challenges in finding recurring revenue in mobile, how location can solve that problem, and where the money would come from to build a lasting local advertising company in mobile…
8 Tools to Send Messages to Shoppers Based on In-Store Movements
Forty-four percent of shoppers now say they’ve used their smartphones for product research while standing in a store’s aisles, which means marketers who fail to connect with customers through effective in-store messaging are losing out on engagement at a critical time in the buying process. Here are eight tools that merchants can use to send offers or promotions based on their customers’ real-time indoor movements…
Why TV Remains the Heartbeat of Local Connection