News and Analysis

Street Fight Daily: Facebook Expected to Bring Bidding to In-App Ads, Barriers to Online-Offline Attribution

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Facebook Offers Brands In-App Ads… Performance Pricing Pitfalls: The Truth About Offline-Visit Data for Advertisers… TGI Friday’s AI-Powered Marketing Drives $150 Million…

Report: Brands Abandoning Social Media Measurement

The rise of tools like IoT and chatbots, along with reliable channels like email, have cut into the diminished albeit still powerful role of social along the customer journey, explains Mark Smith, president and CEO of Kitewheel.

Street Fight Daily: Local Merchants Unfazed by Facebook Controversy, Consumers Apprehensive on Voice

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Most Local Merchants Unfazed by Facebook Controversies, Though Some Signs of Trouble… Report: Brands Abandoning Social Media Measurement… Microsoft’s GitHub Deal Marks Latest Shift from Windows…

Commentary

How Big Brands and SMBs Can Use Vine Videos to Reach Local Consumers

Vine has not only cracked the code on mobile video. It has created an entirely new medium. The question for brands and local businesses alike is how to leverage it as a marketing channel. Here are a few ideas about how to test the new app and what to look for as it matures…

Mapping Apps Making an Impact on Mobile Purchase Intent

Apps like Mapquest and Waze are used with a direct intention as part of “lower funnel” purchase considerations.But map users also demonstrate high engagement with visible advertisers served to them as a complement to their core navigation needs…

Mom-and-Pops That Don’t Invest in Social Will Miss Out

According to an article by Julie Brooks published last week on Street Fight, demand for social media management among small business owners has “dropped off a cliff.” But social media is about taking word-of-mouth online, and now that the prominent social media websites are making it easier than ever to capitalize on these moments, local businesses have everything to gain…

Latest Posts

Report: Mobile Will Account for Half of Social Advertising Revenue by 2017

Mobile is poised to account for a majority of spending on social media advertising in the U.S. by 2017, eclipsing spending on desktop a year later, according to report from BIA/Kelsey released this morning. The research firm estimates that spending on social advertising in the U.S. will nearly triple over the next five years, swelling from $5.1 billion last year to $15 billion by 2018. In 2017, the firms expects that marketers will spend $6.7 billion — or half of all social media advertising revenues — on mobile ad formats.

Street Fight Daily: Axciom Adds Offline Data, Facebook’s Foursquare-esque Cards

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technologyAcxiom Acquires LiveRamp to Boost Offline-to-Online Data Capability (AdAge)… Facebook is Testing Foursquare-esque Cards to Tell You More About Where You’ve Checked In (Verge)… Square’s Status? It’s Complicated (Fortune)…

Two Years After Pulling Back, Gilt City Moves Ahead

Following a retrenchment, Gilt City is growing again. Street Fight caught up with Steven Schneider, the president and general manager at the local shopping site, to talk about the evolution of local commerce, the business of curation, and the changing relationship between ecommerce and brick-and-mortar marketplaces for retailers…

Finding the Right Point of Contact At: An Agency

Breaking into the big-time and selling to a national brand usually involves going through an agency. However, locating the best point of contact at a media planning and buying agency with hundreds—if not thousands—of employees is a process that requires experience, skill, and quite a bit of patience. Here are five strategies for finding the right person to pitch in an agency setting…

Street Fight Daily: Airbnb Eyes Hotel Tonight, Square Rethinks The Reciept

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technologyAirbnb Takes on Hotels With Last-Minute Booking (Verge)… Square Turns the Lowly Receipt Into a Giant Opportunity (Wired)… Let’s Face Facts: Mobile Wallets Are Doomed (ReadWrite)…

3 Mobile Marketing Musts for Brick-and-Mortar Retailers

Over the past few years we’ve seen the mobile marketing industry mature, with new standards and best practices emerging to help marketers reach mobile consumers as they move throughout their day. Here are three mobile marketing strategies which have become table stakes for physical retailers…

5 Platforms That Gather In-Store Analytics from Surveillance Footage

Nearly 64% of retailers have installed some form of IP-connected video surveillance system to protect against theft. Now, a relatively new category of hyperlocal vendors are providing businesses with new ways to capitalize on the technology they already have installed. Here are five tools that retailers large and small can use to make more strategic operational decisions based on the data they gather from video surveillance cameras…

Street Fight Daily: Square Kills Wallet App, Yelp Integrates Booking Service

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technologySquare Pulls Failed Wallet App as Troubles Mount (Wall Street Journal)… Yelp Bites Back At OpenTable, TripAdvisor And Google With Free Yelp Reservations Service (TechCrunch)… Apple Reportedly Integrating NFC Technology into iPhone 6 (MacRumors)…

For Local Commerce Startups Like Homejoy, A Choice of Whom to Disrupt

Airbnb’s recent decision to become a hospitality brand has deep implications for a growing segment of startups that have built similar digital marketplaces for a number of traditionally offline industries. Today, these startups face a similar ontological decision: should they become a consumer brand, expanding deeper into a given industry, or should they expand horizontally, working to disrupt Yelp, Google and the other more horizontal mainstays of local search and discovery…

6 Tools Publishers Can Use to Monetize Their Business Directories

directoryHyperlocal publishers are frequently on the lookout for new ways to generate revenue from their sites, and one of the most straightforward revenue diversification strategies involves launching a business directory. Here are six tools that publishers can use to monetize business directories on their hyperlocal sites…