News and Analysis
Street Fight Daily: Ad Tech Facing Day of Judgment in GDPR, Who’s Using Local AR?
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Publishers Say They’ll Use GDPR to Shed Ad Tech Vendors… Smart Speakers Top Phones for Voice Assistance… Cisco Is Acquiring Business Intelligence Startup Accompany for $270M…
Street Fight Daily: Regions Localizes Its Social Strategy, Developers Harried by Facebook Changes
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Regions Bank Foregrounds the Lives of its Customers on Social With a Local Focus… Facebook’s Privacy Changes Leave Developers Steaming… Why Marketers Struggle With Data Management…
Commentary
Apple Maps: Taking the Long View
There’s no dancing around the fact that the much-anticipated launch of Apple Maps has turned into a fiasco for the company. Yet there’s little doubt Apple will buff out this particular blemish with time. The interesting part will be seeing exactly how the company chooses to address the gap in expertise that led to the current sub-par product. A big acquisition of talent or technology seems likely…
iOS6: Can Google Beat Apple in its Own Backyard?
Mapping is a game ultimately won on function rather than form. This requires lots of listings data and search algorithms; in other words, things that are non-core to Apple. Relative to Google’s tenure in this area, Apple is only starting to stitch together local vertical content partners like Yelp and TomTom. And it’s already starting to show…
BxB Recap: Is This the Future of Local News?
The passion with the group at Block by Block isn’t just about great journalism — it’s about turning online journalism into a business; it’s about leveraging existing tools and creating new ones; and most importantly it’s about working to collaboratively across these businesses to make an impact…
Latest Posts
Study: Only 13% of Small Businesses Invest in Reviews
Small business owners are underestimating the importance of online reviews — negatively influencing their communication with customers as a result, according to a new survey conducted by local marketing provider Yodle. Only 13 percent of small business owners said they actively pursued online reviews from their customers…
Street Fight Daily: Google Courts Local Media, Billionaire Prince May Back Square
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology.… Google Helping Local Publishers Surf The Programmatic Wave
(Forbes)… Will this Billionaire Saudi Arabian Prince Back Jack Dorsey’s Square (Fox Business)… GoDaddy Will Take On Shopify With A Simpler E-Commerce Storefront Arriving This Spring (TechCrunch)…
As Seamless Nears IPO, Search and Commerce Continue on Collision Course
Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported that GrubHub Seamless had made a confidential filing for an initial public offering. The move puts the food ordering giant on a collision course with Yelp and Google as the three firms look to wrangle local consumers who increasingly expect to search, compare and buy in a single keystroke…
5 Self-Serve Deals Platforms for SMBs
Groupon has generated significant press thanks to the recent rollout of its self-serve Deal Builder, which local merchants can use to create limited-time promotions for themselves. However, the daily deals giant is hardly the only vendor offering this type of service to SMBs. For years, a number of hyperlocal vendors have been providing self-service solutions to SMBs…
Street Fight Daily: Location Analytics CEO Arrested, Mobile Commerce Heats Up
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology.… Former Motionloft CEO Jon Mills Arrested By The FBI (TechCrunch)… Rapid Growth of Mobile Commerce Fuels Rash of Competing Solutions (Financial Times)… MasterCard Dives Deeper Into Mobile With In-app Payments, C-SAM Acquisition (GigaOm)…
Mobile App GoSpotCheck Helps Brands Track Effectiveness of In-Store Marketing
In-store marketing is a big business for retailers, but traditionally brands have had no way of knowing the effectiveness of the strategy until the display is packed away, and the campaign is finished. Enter GoSpotCheck, a Denver-based startup that has developed a mobile app that helps retail companies collect and share inventory and sales information in real time, and check with the promotion they paid for is up and running.
LBMA Podcast: Mobile Mixed Founder Talks SMS Marketing
Welcome to This Week in Location Based Marketing, a weekly video podcast from the Location Based Marketing Association. Top stories of the week include Sears offering curbside pickup; Virgin America’s new in-air social network; augmented reality on the bus; the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago’s interactive billboard; Localytics brings in $17M in funding; and Yahoo! partners with Yelp…
Street Fight Daily: Seamless Files for IPO, Norstrom’s Local Sales Slump
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology.… GrubHub Seamless Joins the Tech IPO Crush (Wall Street Journal)… Sales at Nordstrom’s Department Stores Continue to Shrink (Wall Street Journal)… Are Companies Tracking us, or Merely “Observing” us? (Pando)…
Groupon Revenues Up, But Even Growth Disappoints the Market
Groupon reported stronger-than-expected earnings for the holiday quarter, but shares of the daily deal giant tanked in after hours trading due in part to poor first quarter guidance and concerns over declining margins. The company grew revenue by 18% from a year earlier, but it also saw double digit declines in margins decreased by as its less profitable ecommerce business continued to account for a larger portion of the wider revenue mix…
Reuters’ Salmon: Facebook and Twitter Don’t Replace Community Journalism
We all know that Facebook, Twitter and other social media are transforming news in major ways. But Reuters blogger Felix Salmon says social media — especially Facebook — aren’t just changing news as we have known it, but creating an entirely new news product that is defined by “personalization.” I went to Salmon to find out if there’s a place for community news sites in this world of personalized information…
















































Meta Is Automating Ads, But Brands Still Face a Bigger Problem