News and Analysis

Foreshadowing Future of Food Delivery, Delivery.com Launches Product for Workplace Orders

The team at delivery.com believes there are still holes in the workplace food ordering market waiting to be filled. Its attempt to meet those needs is debuting this morning, as the company adds new group ordering functionality to its platform.

Street Fight Daily: Amazon Cuts Out Google Shopping Ads, Advertisers Question Facebook ROI

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Amazon Stops Buying Prized Shopping Ads on Google… Facebook’s Big Threat Isn’t Cambridge Analytica — It’s Advertisers Questioning ROI… Google’s DoubleClick Ad ID Change Presents Challenges and Opportunity for Attribution Vendors…

Street Culture: dataPlor Strives for Transparency in Every Facet of Its Business

There’s a phrase dataPlor CEO and founder Geoff Michener uses so frequently and quickly that it almost sounds rehearsed: open, direct, transparent communication. 

Commentary

Daily Deals vs. Happy Hours: The Impact of Internal Marketing Promos

To get a sense of how happy hour compares to daily deals, Copilot Labs analyzed the point of sale data from a restaurant that has consistently run both happy hour and daily deals for more than a year and half. From April 2011 to October 2012 this business ran three deals and has had an active deal and happy hour every month…

Sizing the Industry: Who Gets Counted as ‘Hyperlocal?’

Since we launched Street Fight in April of last year, one question has come up again and again that we don’t have a very good answer for: “How many hyperlocal news sites are currently operating in the U.S. — and is that number growing? And if it’s growing, how fast is it growing?”

SMBs on Mobile: Questions of Analytics and Performance

The proliferation of mobile apps for local continues, with all major local search players maintaining their own apps, and Apple’s App Store currently returning 347 results for the phrase “local search.” With all of this attention, the time is not far away when businesses will begin to get concerned about the presence, accuracy, and effectiveness of their listings on mobile apps. I’d love to see a service that aims at comprehensive analysis of SMB presence across the “app space” for Android and Apple…

Latest Posts

Probabilistic Device Matching Isn’t Perfect — But It Works

The use of probabilistic matching or statistical IDs to link multiple devices to an individual is often dismissed based on dubious accuracy. It’s true that the practice will never be 100% accurate, but even taking the conservative estimate at the lower end of this range, probabilistic matching enables marketers to scale their mobile advertising campaigns with reasonable expectations of performance…

Discovering Common Ground Among ‘Indie’ and Corporate Hyperlocal Sites

The digital Grand Canyon that has divided independent and corporate hyperlocal news sites is not looking so immense lately. The “indies” and the corporates are still kicking up a lot of dust in their community-by-community competition. But these rivals are changing their operations and strategies in ways that make them look more alike than different…

LBMA Podcast: Banjo’s Raise, Wearable Experiments, One Llama

Top stories of the week include Mahana, Locoslab, Yelp & Yahoo!, Emotient, UTEC, Apple, HP & Aurasma. The Mobile Minute with Chuck Martin recaps some highlights from SXSW and the resource of the week demystifies the second screen in North America…

Street Fight Daily: Yelp Partners With YP, Airbnb’s $10B Valuation

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technologyYelp, YP Partner in Local Advertising Deal (SearchEngineLand)… New Capital Could Raise Airbnb Value To $10 Billion (New York Times)… The Newsonomics of Selling Cars.com (Nieman Journalism Lab)…

Finding the Right Point of Contact At: A Franchise Organization

Crafting the perfect pitch is only part of the challenge. For hyperlocal vendors trying to generate traction in a crowded marketplace, being able to locate the best point of contact at each of the individual companies being pitched is an incredibly important part of the sales process. Here are four strategies for finding the right person to pitch at a franchise organization, from hyperlocal executives who’ve had success…

What Real-Time Computing Means for Local Commerce

Earlier this month, SAP, the german business software giant, announced that it plans to put a version of its real-time analytics software Hana online. The computing platform is one of a number of new analytics products that use so-called in-memory processing — a reference to a computer’s temporary, or working memory — to rapidly analyze vast amounts of data in an instant, allowing businesses to draw insights and make decisions in a matter of milliseconds…

Street Fight Daily: Mobile Search Explodes, Facebook Ends the Free Ride

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technologyIn 2013 Mobile Search Exploded but the Dollars Haven’t Followed Suit (Yet) (Pando)… Facebook Is Ending the Free Ride (ValleyWag)… Foursquare CEO: Google and Yelp are ‘Incredibly Broken’ (VentureBeat)…

Case Study: Ace Hardware Uses Mobile Tools to Drive Shoppers In-Store

National hardware chain Ace Hardware recently debuted a new mobile iPhone application, meant to enhance the shopping experience and encourage customers to complete their transaction at local Ace Hardware locations…

Is Facebook Paper the Wake-up Call Publishers Need?

Media companies and publishers need to take a page from Facebook and other fast-moving digital properties. These digital entities are giving readers what they want while using what they know about users to “make a killing” with ads. Publishers who were virtually sidelined by these digital powerhouse companies can now get back in the game by adopting a Zuckerberg move: creating the right conditions and culture…

Street Fight Daily: Clinkle Revealed, Ride-Sharing War Intensifies

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technologyClinkle Revealed: Here’s What the Embattled Startup Is (And Isn’t) Building (Recode)… Ride-Sharing Price War Intensifies With Lyft’s ‘Happy Hour’ Discount (Wall Street Journal)… LivingSocial to Prioritize Growth Over Profitability, New Chief Revenue Officer Says (Washington Post)…