News and Analysis

Street Culture: Pointy’s Collaborative Culture Grows Without Written Values

In one year, digital search company Pointy has grown from 13 to about 30 employees, moved into a new office, and seen significant growth in its product, which allows retailers to publishes their inventories online, attracting potential customers nearby. What hasn’t changed much is the company’s culture, says co-founder Mark Cummins.

B2B Marketers Turn to Shorter Videos Across Many Channels to Engage Millennial Buyers

Video marketing platform Vidyard analyzed more than 250,000 videos published by business-to-business marketing teams and found that smaller businesses are publishing just as much video content as larger firms, while the average length of videos is getting shorter.

Street Fight Daily: Buyers Lag on Mobile Programmatic, The Turn to Video Goes Multichannel

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… When It Comes to Mobile Programmatic, Buyers Are Behind… B2B Marketers Turn to Shorter Videos Across Many Channels to Engage Millennial Buyers… A Year After Amazon Devoured Whole Foods, Rivals Pursue Countermoves…

Commentary

Why Broadcasters Need to Embrace Digital Hyperlocal

There are lots of hyperlocal marketing opportunities are being missed daily by traditional broadcast media. This isn’t because stations don’t want the revenue — it’s because they are so understaffed and under-funded, it’s simply difficult to devote resources to learning new technologies. But this may be exactly the right time to start investing their (very small) resources to upgrade mobile apps and improve online capabilities to tap hyperlocal dollars…

What Reviews Sites Need to Do to Prepare for Facebook’s Graph Search

It’s well known that reviews, ratings, and recommendations are a major factor in driving consumer decisions. Sourcing friends or people you know to provide advice holds even more weight when it comes to personalization and has an added benefit of trust. This is what makes the concept of Facebook’s new Graph Search so powerful…

Efficiently Selling to SMBs: Finding Paths of Less Resistance

We’re entering a more fertile environment for what I’ll call the SMB advertising “Trojan Horse.” Local companies start by targeting SMBs’ CRM systems, payroll, back office management, reputation management and payment processing. From there, local advertising can be unveiled as a “one-stop-shop” upsell…

Latest Posts

Street Fight Daily: Amazon Plans Local Marketplace, RadioShack’s Losses Deepen

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technologyAmazon Plans Local Services Marketplace This Year (Reuters)… RadioShack Draws on Credit Line as Losses Deepen (Wall Street Journal)… Google to Buy Skybox Imaging for $500 Million (New York Times)…

Placed Raises $10M to Help Mobile Advertisers Ditch Clicks

A hedge fund has led a $10 million series B investment in Placed, a location analytics firm that uses Nielsen-like panels to help advertisers measure the effectiveness of advertising in the physical world. The funding highlights the growing demand by stakeholders in the mobile marketing industry to move beyond the click-through-rate by measuring the performance of digital advertising offline…

Mobile’s Increasingly Strong Influence in Consumer Purchase Decisions

The third annual installment of the xAd/Telmetrics Mobile Path-to-Purchase study shows that mobile is a powerful force throughout the consumer purchase cycle. Consumers are spending more research time on their mobile devices than on their PCs, and more than one-third of mobile users use their devices exclusively to research purchases…

Street Fight Daily: GoDaddy Files for IPO, Amex Partners With Uber

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technologyGoDaddy Files for IPO (Wall Street Journal)… Uber and Amex Partner on In-App Loyalty Program (Recode)… Head of PayPal to Join Facebook (New York Times)…

JiWire Rebrands as NinthDecimal to Focus on Data Business

JiWire has rebranded as NinthDecimal as it looks to compete in an increasingly crowded mobile advertising technology sector by highlighting its data business. The move underscores the importance of consumer data in the way advertisers buy audiences online, and subsequent decline of media as the currency of online advertising…

7 Analytics Tools to Track Local Campaigns

Gut feelings and instinct can only take business owners so far. To determine the actual value of local campaigns, marketers need access to raw data. Unfortunately, obtaining this information — and then using it to compare two or more hyperlocal platforms in a head-to-head setting — isn’t always as straightforward as it seems. Here are seven platforms that businesses can use to measure the effectiveness of their local campaigns…

Street Fight: Uber Raises $1.2B, Apple Acquires Local Search Engine

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technologyUber Gets an Uber-Valuation (Wall Street Journal)… Apple Acquires Spotsetter, A Social Search Engine For Places (TechCrunch)… Jim Brady Plans News Org in Philly Called Brother.ly (Poynter)…

Up Close and Personal: Ex-Patcher Tells How He Went Independent

Michael Dinan was senior regional editor for Patch in suburban Connecticut when he — along with hundreds of other editorial staffers — was terminated in January as part of Aol’s deal to sell most of the community news network to Hale Global. After the blow fell, he turned around and set up the independent site New Canaanite within days — and expanded it to a collaborative network in suburban Connecticut shortly thereafter…

Openings and New Hires at Dex Media, Connectivity, GoDaddy, and Hearst

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 hibu, Google, PlaceIQ, Advance Visibility and more …

LBMA Podcast: Chuck E. Cheese Meets Oculus Rift

Welcome to This Week in Location Based Marketing, a weekly video podcast from the Location Based Marketing Association. Top stories of the week include Metaio’s Thermal Touch, Beck’s playable poster, tipping street musicians with Bitcoin, JINS health glass — and Bubbly launches direct carrier billing…