News and Analysis
Street Fight Daily: Brands Demand Video Strategies, Scandal Doesn’t Affect Facebook Use
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Selling to Multi-Location Brands: Streaming Video Is On the Rise… Poll: Three-Quarters Facebook Users as Active or More Since Scandal… Volvo Cars to Come With Google Assistant, Maps Built In…
SMB Index: Local Stocks See Solid Gains in April
April marked another volatile month in the public markets. But it was a relatively strong month for local stocks, as the SurePath SMB Index was up 2.8% in April, topping all major indices.
Street Fight Daily: How Agencies Can Adapt to SEO Market Changes, Amazon Preps Alexa for Brands
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… The Bifurcation of the Local SEO Services Market… Amazon Is Finally Cashing in on Alexa… Facebook Weighs Ad-Free Subscription Model…
Commentary
Place Off: A Week in the Life of the Mobile Local Revolution
A couple columns back, I covered the collision of big data, mobile and local (please refrain from acronyms… “BiDaLoMo”!). That covered some location analytics players like JiWire and Sense Networks. But since then, the action has picked up. In the last week alone, I’ve had in-depth conversations with others defining this space including Placed, PlaceIQ, and Telenav…
Getting ‘Real-Time’ Into Hyperlocal Advertising
We’ve seen a demand to not only bring local advertisers back into the mix on mobile and online advertising, but a need to provide more relevant and more timely information within those ads. This is because consumers crave “new” at a pace never possible before now – and this desire shows in the response rates measured in multiples of a standard static banner ad…
True Innovation in Local News Organizations Still Lacking
News sites need to innovate around their core competencies by spending time understanding their customers (advertisers and consumers) and what problems they can solve for them. The solutions should be a good fit for the organization and should be something that they are uniquely positioned in the marketplace to provide…
Latest Posts
Control Group, a Dev Shop for the Real World, Rethinks Subway Navigation
The agency is one of a handful of development and marketing companies to carve out a niche in bringing the web to the physical world. These companies are helping retailers, restaurants and a range of other organizations with a stake in a physical place to use connectivity to rethink the way we engage with the world around us…
LBMA Podcast: Square, LevelUp, and Thinknear’s Eli Portnoy
Top stories of the week include Square and Bookfresh, CommuteStream, LevelUp and Foodler, Muber, SounderPoster 3.0, Amtrak, Caribou Coffee, IMGuest.com, Mastercard and Syniverse and Stylinity…
Street Fight Daily: Staples Ditches Bricks, Flickr Founder Goes Hyperlocal
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Staples to Close 225 Stores as Sales Move Online (New York TimesS)… Flickr Co-Founder Seeks Another Hit With New Findery App (Reuters)… Yahoo Rolling Out Indoor Maps (SearchEngineLand)…
New Patch Owner Hale Running Company in ‘Lean, Entrepreneurial Mode’
“There are lots of potential models, and there’s no reason to be ideological about finding the right match between models and communities,” says Hale. “The best thing for hyperlocal journalism is a sustainable business model.”
In the Age of Big Data, Sometimes a Phone Call Still Works Best
More and more, marketers are turning to deep data analytics to measure the impact relative to a local marketing campaign. But call measurement provider Telmetrics says that value can still be delivered by paying attention to a more basic form of interaction: phone calls…
Street Fight Daily: Google Kills Offers, Foursquare Reveals Revenues
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Google Shuts Down Self Serve Offers Product (Blumenthals)… Foursquare CEO Dennis Crowley, Rebuffing Sale Offers, Says Revenues Grew 500% in Q1 2014, 600% In 2013 (TechCrunch)… Short-term Profit Taking vs. Long-term Value Creation: The Future of PayPal (LinkedIn)…
New Location-Based Services Are Poised to Enter the Mainstream
To a surprising degree, the panels and presenters at Street Fight’s Local Data Summit last week in Denver emphasized a similar theme: we’re about to see a plethora of new technology-enhanced real-life experiences centering on ingenious uses of data. The signal feature this time around is an orientation toward experiences situated in a physical context. The question the new technologies will answer is this: “What do I need my technology to do for me now, in this place, at this time, under these circumstances?”
Can Renewed Coordination Prevent a Rollup in Local Media?
Last week Google made news when the search giant struck a deal with the Local Media Consortium to power a private advertising exchange . Yesterday, Christian Hendricks, the Consortium’s chairman and a McClatchy executive, pitched the plan to a room of media executives, and made the case why the new consortium could succeed where it failed nearly a decade ago…
Street Fight Daily: RadioShack Shutters Stores, A Rollup in Food Delivery
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… RadioShack Plans to Close Up to 1,100 Stores (Wall Street Journal)… With Eye On Growth, Just Eat Buys Meal2Go To Offer EPOS Tech To Its Takeaway Partners (TechCrunch)… NCR Updates Its iPad Cash Register With Loyalty Features (GigaOm)…
6 Call Monetization Platforms for SMBs
Phone leads may not be glamorous or trendy, but they’re the backbone of local marketing strategy for millions of small businesses in the professional services, travel, auto, and insurance industries. $68 billion is spent annually on localized ads to generate these calls. Here are six call monetization vendors that businesses can work with…
Street Fight’s Big 3
Street Fight Columns
Street Fight Categories
Meta Is Automating Ads, But Brands Still Face a Bigger Problem