News and Analysis
#SFSNYC: Broadly CEO: Brick-and-Mortars Need to Become Messaging Centers
Phone calls and contact forms are dead, but what about websites? Not so much, said Josh Melick, CEO of Broadly, at Street Fight’s annual summit in New York Wednesday. With this trend showing no signs of stopping, websites—especially those of local businesses—need to become messaging centers.
#SFSNYC: The Growing Power of SMB OS
Until recently, brick-and-mortar shopping relied on the digital world for advertising functions and not much else. But now, local retail has a new digital arena—the full-service operating system. Three leaders in this expanding set of technological solutions for SMBs laid out the state of the field, known as SMB OS, at Street Fight Summit in New York Wednesday.
#SFSNYC: Making Conversational Interfaces the Frontline for Customer Interaction
The development of conversational language to interact with chatbots, digital assistants, smart devices, and other machines is changing the ways consumers make use of such platforms to find the information and services they want—and this change is only going to get more important for brands and local businesses to address.
Commentary
Publishers Could Gain More Control as Browsers Curb Behavioral Ads
As limits arise on behavioral ads, endemic sites (or sites with actionable user data) can essentially become ad networks. If browser limits mean that Cars.com can no longer sell its data, then the opportunity exists for the company itself to develop a platform to sell audience extension…
Limits on Behavioral Ads Could Bring Higher CPMs for Publishers
On an Internet without online behavioral advertising, publishers with a premium audience will be in higher demand, and this will result over time in increased CPMs and increased revenue. It will be a step back in time to where premium publishers and ad networks (not exchanges) were handling most of the media buys.
How to Ensure That Your Geofence Is Sized Correctly
Location-based push campaigns have a lot of upside, from satisfied customers to higher ROI. But it can be a thin line that separates a successful campaign from one that leaves mobile users extremely annoyed — so really homing in on how to deliver the right geofence to optimize your campaign is crucial…
Latest Posts
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…
5 Platforms for Analyzing Customer Sentiment
To help marketers gain a better understanding of what people are truly saying about their companies, a number of hyperlocal vendors are stepping in with tools that automatically analyze customer sentiment on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter…
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)…
For Small Businesses, A Reprieve After Decades of Retreat
Earlier this week, the National Federation of Independent Business announced that its small business confidence index rose 1.8 points to 95.2 in April, the highest reading since October 2007. With small business week coming to a close, small businesses are certainly better off today than they were a decade ago…
LBMA Podcast: YP’s Mobile Labs and Second Canvas
This Week in Location Based Marketing is a weekly video podcast from the Location Based Marketing Association. Top stories of the week include Digby and Phunware, Amazon & Twitter, Uber & Google Maps, RoadID, PareUp & excess food, Selfridge’s Fragrance Lab, Rivada’s nascent mesh network, & Nivea’s SUN ads….
Street Fight Daily: Uber Seeks $10B Valuation, NextDoor CEO Charged With Felony
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Uber Said to Be in Funding Talks for More Than $10B Value (Bloomberg)… Nextdoor CEO Nirav Tolia Faces Hit-and-Run Charges in San Francisco (Mashable)… Foursquare’s Swarm And The Rise Of The Invisible App (TechCrunch)…
How Training Has Helped Some Community Publishers Thrive
“Getting money from local businesses is a street fight,” says Rusty Coats. “The options and alternatives seem to grow exponentially every day, and many businesses live in a fog of not knowing what to do. … That’s why I applaud these community news entrepreneurs and what they’re trying to accomplish. They are mission-driven and determined to build sustainable businesses by serving their communities.”
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Meta Is Automating Ads, But Brands Still Face a Bigger Problem