Commentary
Local Mapping Services and the Public Trust
The towering presence of Google in the mapping world today is testament to its success in product development, but this also indicates something else. People don’t just think of maps as a product to be consumed. It seems that we have begun to consider mapping services as a public trust…
Local TV Stations: The Sleeping Beasts in Hyperlocal News
Resting on the laurels of legacy profits only gets you so far. Just ask newspaper publishers. When you really take a good look at the local television business, it’s clear this is an industry waiting to be disrupted — and when that happens, outlets that haven’t invested sufficiently in digital won’t have much to hold onto…
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Case Study: Texas Pharmacy Leverages Beacons for In-Store Offers
Rather than going it alone and creating a targeted marketing platform from the ground up, Tarrytown Pharmacy owner Mark Newberry opted to work with a hyperlocal startup that was looking for businesses to test out its platform. The company, Shelfbucks, offers personalized deals to people shopping in store using iBeacons…
Mobile Ad Revenues Growing Faster Than Previously Expected
A new study from BIA/Kelsey finds that mobile advertising revenues may be picking up at a faster clip than previously thought. In the U.S. Local Media Forecast, the research firm projects that mobile ad spending in the U.S. will rise from $7.22 billion in 2013 to $25.47 billion in 2017, a 20% increase from what the company projected last year. Meanwhile, the share of mobile ad spending spent on locally-targeted ads continues to grow as well — albeit at slightly slower rate than previously expected…
Street Fight Daily: GoDaddy Moves Ahead With IPO, Mapquest Reboots
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… MapQuest Aims For Reboot With New Content, Partners, UI (SearchEngineLand)… Go Daddy Said to Pick Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan for I.P.O. (New York Times)… Yelp’s Deal With Yahoo Has Small Businesses Crying Foul (Wall Street Journal)…
Study: 80% of Mobile Searches Result in a Purchase
Brand marketers have started to catch up with consumers on mobile, but small businesses still remain far behind — and it may be starting to affect their bottom line. A new study finds that consumers are increasingly turning to their mobile devices to search for local businesses when they are ready to buy, but the information they want is often inaccurate, incomplete, or non-existent.
Will Mobile Ad Tech Consolidate? Not Yet, Says Verve CEO
There’s a debate, particularly within mobile advertising technology, over whether location is a feature or a sector unto itself. Street Fight recently caught up with Tom MacIsaac, chief executive at Verve Mobile, one of the earliest mobile-local advertising technologies to the market, to discuss the prospect of consolidation, the data quality problem in mobile, and what the endgame might be for location ad tech…
Street Fight Daily: Google Books Hotels, What’s Next for Square?
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Google Checks In to the Hotel Business (Wall Street Journal)… A Sale or IPO or More Funding? Here’s What Might Be Next for Square (Recode)… Uber’s Threat Finally Hits as Postmates Surges to 10k Deliveries a Week (Pando)
Reconsidering Location for On-the-Go Consumers
Out-of-home works because it is exactly what its name implies. That’s a powerful advantage. But with great power comes great responsibility. And in order to capitalize on this advantage, we need to re-think our approach. Once we start regarding out-of-home as a behavior (specifically, of consumers on-the-go) instead of just a set of location-specific screens, our success is almost guaranteed…
6 Strategies for Measuring the Impact of In-Store Messaging
By 2016, mobile is expected to have a $327 billion influence on in-store sales, but many of the merchants who utilize these hyperlocal technologies are having difficulty determining the true ROI of their campaigns. Here are six strategies for businesses to measure the impact of their in-store messaging campaigns…
Closely Raises $3M to Turn Its Social Analytics App Into a Business
Closely, the maker of Perch, a social analytics app for small businesses, has raised $3 million in a series A round of funding led by Grotech ventures. Amid a chaotic local marketing industry, the company has quietly built out a novel business model which draws on learnings from the consumer world to solve one of the most dire problems in the business technology industry: selling to small businesses…
Street Fight Daily: Yodle Plans IPO, Uber Tests Courier Service
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Online Advertising Company Yodle Planning IPO This Year (Wall Street Journal)… Uber Expands Into Courier Service With Manhattan-Only Pilot (Bloomberg Businessweek)… Facebook Wants to Turn 25 Million Small Businesses Into Advertisers (AdAge)…
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