News and Analysis

Street Fight Daily: Google Monetizes Product Searches, Amazon’s Next Whole Foods Move

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Google Partners with Retail Giants to Monetize Online Product Searches… Amazon Accidentally Revealed Its Next Plan for Whole Foods in a Job Posting… 10% Own an AI Device, 32% Plan to Get One, 58% Don’t Want Any…

Street Culture: Invoca’s Lessons for Active, Engaged Growth

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Based a mile from the beach in Santa Barbara, Invoca aims to maintain a culture in which employees know their ideas are important. The company sponsors softball games and ocean-side volleyball and boasts its own band.

Street Fight Daily: Facebook Launches Local Hotspots, Media Companies Shift to YouTube

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Facebook Launches Express WiFi App for Its Local Business-Operated Hotspots… Why Media Companies Are Shifting Their Attention to YouTube… Why Publishers Are Eliminating Programmatic Silos…

Commentary

Prescription for Patch: Become an All-in-One SMB Marketing Solution

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There is a real opportunity to offer businesses a service that bundles together as many online promotional vehicles as possible into a simple, low-cost package that makes it easy for them to communicate with their customers. If Patch decided to go this route, the company would be well-positioned to make the service work. Unlike other local start-ups, it has the resources to build this kind of integrated system…

Selling a City to Tourists Via Hyperlocal

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There is an emerging opportunity for cities to subsidize hyperlocal marketing efforts through hyperlocal platforms. For example, a city agency could create a neighborhood-based promotion on top of mobile payment play LevelUp in which a visitor who shared that they say, ate lunch at a traditional tourist destination, could win a promotion to receive a free round trip train fare to a peripheral neighborhood if they ate dinner at a restaurant in the neighborhood…

Local Search: Will Mobile Overtake Desktop?

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Location targeting and search ads (and their combination) will be the relevance drivers that create not only intent-driven user engagement and advertiser demand, but also a top source of premium ad units. It hasn’t happened yet but it will…

Latest Posts

Street Fight Daily: Groupon’s Next Big Thing, Yelp Ad Growth Lifts Stock

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology.Groupon’s Next Big Thing? Helping Mom-and-Pop Shops Unload Extra Inventory. (Recode)… Yelp Reaches High as JPMorgan Says Ad Growth Will Lift Stock (Bloomberg)… Will (Local) Q&A App Jelly Succeed Where Others Have Failed? (Screenwerk)…

Esri’s Amber Case: Why ‘Less Is More’ With Local Data

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As far as technologists are concerned, few in the industry are more familiar with the nuts and bolts of how location data is made than Amber Case. A self-proclaimed “cyborg anthropologist,” she sold her startup Geoloqi, which built positioning algorithms for developers, to Esri last year, and today, she heads up the 45-year-old mapping firm’s R&D center. Street Fight recently caught up with Case to discuss what we might expect from location data in the years to come…

Hyperlocal M&A in 2014 — Here’s What the Big Acquirers Are Looking For

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YP’s acquisition of Sense Networks earlier this week comes as M&A activity in the local technology continues to increase, with the market seeing the number of large, double digit deals increase in 2013. Here’s a quick look at several major players who may currently be in the hunt for locally focused acquisitions and what they might be looking for.

Street Fight Daily: Uber’s Surge Pricing Stays, AOL CEO Speaks About Patch

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology.Uber CEO: Surge Pricing Is Here to Stay (Wall Street Journal)… AOL CEO Upbeat on Adap.tv Business, Patch Partnership (USA Today)… Yelp seeks Washington clout after rapid rise in Silicon Valley (The Hill)…

Is Newspapers’ Falling Knife Finally Starting to Rise?

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Wall Street thinks the long-term decline of newspaper revenues may be near bottom as print losses are close to being outweighed by consumer and digital revenue increases. With Warren Buffet and Jeff Bezos buying into the industry as a long-term play, the broader financial markets are following suit. The newspaper industry is getting some of its most positive signs in years…

5 Revenue Diversification Strategies for Hyperlocal Publications

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Revenue diversification is a hot topic within the hyperlocal community, as publishers seek out new ways to generate income without sacrificing the quality of the products they provide. Some publishers are gaining audience share by partnering with other local media, some are focusing on mobile ad strategies, and others are competing for grants as non-profit organizations. What they all have in common is an interest in finding new ways to expand beyond traditional banner ads…

Street Fight Daily: YP Buys Sense Networks, Taskrabbit Delivers Cold Medicine

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology.YP, a Mobile Search Firm, Buys Sense Networks (New York Times)… Walgreens Taps TaskRabbit to Deliver Cold Medicine to Shut-Ins (Mashable)… Facebook WiFi Comes to Some Netgear Routers, Allowing Small Businesses to Offer Free WiFi access (The Next Web)…

Why HouseCall Thinks Taxi Apps Are Just The Tip Of The Iceberg

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Last year, four engineers from Qualcomm, who were responsible for the company’s location sensor product Gimbal, left the company to start HouseCall, a system that helps users find and book local providers who service home-related projects like plumbing or audio/visual installation. The company has built a similar marketplace model as Seamless in the food delivery sector, providing enterprise software for free to merchants and then selling leads generated by its consumer product…

5 Platforms For Location Data Analysis

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Location data analysis platforms track the spatial behavior of consumers based on previous ad exposures. Although competing platforms work slightly differently from one another, each with its own features and limitations, the overall effect is that marketers can finally determine whether mobile ad exposures are actually luring customers inside their physical stores. Here are five examples of platforms that marketers can use for location data analysis…

Street Fight Daily: Cox Buys Back Stake In AutoTrader, LivingSocial Sells Groupon Stock

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology.Cox to Buy Back Stake in AutoTrader (Wall Street Journal)… LivingSocial Selling its Groupon Stock (Chicago Tribune)… No Mention of Patch in AOL Chief Executive’s End-of-Year Memo (Romenesko)…