Commentary
Hyperlocal Online Ads Are About to Get a Lot Bigger — Billboard-Sized
The next time you are in your doctor’s office, at the mall or at the local sports arena, the ad that you see on a plasma TV display or a digital kiosk could have been purchased and placed there using the same type of system advertisers are using today to buy and place online display ads…
What Can Online Directories Learn From the Yellow Pages?
I’m not advocating a return to the phone book, but I am curious about the lesson it might have to teach us. In particular, the notion of restricted and curated data sets may be worth a revisit. Without foregoing the benefits of scalability, search sites could do more to enable the curation of local data by business owners and other members of local communities…
5 Things Communities Can Do to Improve Their Online Presence
How does your community’s online presence measure up? Does it capture the vibrancy and activity your community has to offer, or does it look out-of-date and abandoned? Since most people’s first impressions of your community are online these days, it’s more important than ever to make sure that impression is accurate and positive…
Latest Posts
In ‘Smart Cities,’ A Sea Change for the Web
Over the past decade, a new vision of the future has emerged, in which mobility, and ubiquitous connectivity is actually drawing us back into the physical world. To accommodate the world’s rapid urbanization, a growing sector of tech companies are working to create new ways to make our cities smarter. Anthony Townsend, a senior research scientist at New York University, spoke to Street Fight recently about about the Smart City movement and the changing relationship the physical and digital worlds…
Can New Local Media Consortium Succeed Where Others Have Not?
For two decades, legacy media have tried to pool their threatened resources and capture digital ad revenue to replace the billions of dollars that stopped flowing to their newspapers and TV stations. They have had some successes, but their more ambitious digital partnerships haven’t fared well. Now, a new group of old-media companies have banded together to form the Local Media Consortium in the hopes that it will it be able to succeed where other tie-ups have not…
Street Fight Daily: Yahoo Launches Yelp Help, Retail’s Red Herring
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Yahoo Launches Yelp Help in Search to Better Battle Google: Here’s What It Looks Like (Recode)… New Data Suggests “Showrooming” on Amazon Might Not be Killing Physical Retail After All (Pando)… Google Tests Desktop-to-Mobile Retargeting With Brand Data (AdAge)…
Why Mobile Marketing Needs to Evolve Past Physical Location
In order for location targeting to be effective, marketers must think beyond just physical location or proximity to their store. It means moving beyond the traditional mindset of ‘who’ you are trying to reach to include ‘where are they,’ ‘what are they doing,’ ‘what are their interests’ or even ‘what might their intentions be,’ based on past behavior…
Case Study: Hotel Chain’s Hyperlocal ‘Microsites’ Increase Online Bookings
Spurred by industry research showing that today’s travelers are more interested in creating memories than receiving discounts, Red Lion has launched a hyperlocal initiative that involves developing local “microsites” for each of the company’s hotel properties, along with localized menus, new transportation signage, and even employee nametags that offer localized tips for guests…
Street Fight Daily: Apple To Sharpen Maps, Consumer Concern Over Mobile Payments
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology….iOS 8 Said to Focus on Mapping, Transit and Augmented Reality (9to5Mac)… Consumers Wary of In-store Mobile Payments (Fixtera)… Microsoft Researchers Launch New Hyperlocal Project With a Twitter Connection (ZDNet)…
5 Tools for Targeting Customers Based On Their Historic Locations
Where consumers have been is just as important as where they’re going. Being able to track the historical — and in some cases, even future — locations of a consumer makes it possible for retailers and brands to strategically target mobile ads to the places where they know their customers are likely to be. Here are five tools that businesses can use to target customers based on where they’ve been…
Street Fight Daily: Twitter Tests Calls, A Deep Look at Uber
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Twitter Tries to Prove Its Ads Drive Sales with Click-to-Call (Digiday)… A Deeper Look at Uber’s Dynamic Pricing Model (Above the Crowd)… EBay Rejects Icahn board Nominees, Asks Investors to do Same (Reuters)…
6 Ways to Use Analytics to Fine-Tune Mobile Campaigns
Mobile marketing is transforming the path to purchase, as consumers rely more heavily on their smartphones when making all types of purchasing decisions. The question for marketers now isn’t whether they should launch mobile campaigns, but how they can improve the effectiveness of those campaigns going forward. Here are six strategies that marketers can use when fine-tuning their mobile campaigns…
AI Is Breaking Down Data Silos — Without Breaking Privacy