News and Analysis
Survey: 72% of Shoppers Use Online Reviews to Judge Local Businesses
A survey by Netsertive found that 72% percent of consumers use online reviews to evaluate local businesses and eight-in-10 always research big items online before making their purchases in-store.
Street Fight Daily: Instagram Creeps Into Payments, Reviews Shape Local Offline Purchases
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Instagram Quietly Launches Payments for Commerce… Augmented Reality Heading to 3 Billion Devices, $85 Billion in Revenue… Yelp’s Chad Richard on the ‘Decentralization’ of Reservations…
Retailers Use AI for In-Store Experimentation, Customer Service
Brick-and-mortar retailers are looking for an edge in their fight against the e-commerce behemoths, and as the battle rages on, it’s looking like artificial intelligence might be the answer.
Commentary
The 3 Biggest Misconceptions About Mobile Location Targeting
Since the dawn of mobile, advertisers have salivated at the idea of targeting users based on their current location — but despite the clear promise of the medium, many have struggled to capitalize on it. A number of misconceptions threaten to confine the industry to the progress made in these early years of mobile, so in an effort to continue our momentum – it’s time a few these myths were officially debunked…
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…
Latest Posts
Street Fight Daily: Apple Rolls Out iBeacon Program, Square Picks Up In-Store
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology.… Apple Starts iBeacon Product Certification Under ‘Made for iPhone’ Program (Apple Insider)… Square is Testing a New App for Ordering Food: Square Pickup (Priceonomics)… Ford to Drop Microsoft From Car Systems (New York Times)…
Why Data May Kill Content as the Key to Local Relevancy
During a keynote at Street Fight’s Local Data Summit in Denver Tuesday, Carol Davidsen, chief executive at Cir.cl and a former Obama for America staffer, spoke about the way the campaign used data to avoid pricey local news buys, and how those learnings are shaping the way companies in the private market buy media…
Inventory Data Could Help Turn The Tide for Brick-and-Mortar Retailers
The rapid growth of Amazon, and the high-profile decline of brick-and-mortar retailers like Borders, masks a surprising statistic: e-commerce makes up only 5-10% of total retail sales in the country. During a panel at Street Fight’s Local Data Summit in Denver Tuesday, panelist argued that bringing inventory data online could provide small, brick-and-mortar stores with an advantage over their online-only competitors…
Charting Consumer Behavior In the Real World
At Street Fight’s Local Data Summit on Tuesday, LocalSEOGuide proprietor Andrew Shotland started off a morning panel discussion on charting consumer behavior in the real world by asking panelists how close the local data industry is to being able to collect and aggregate the location of consumers, and then sell that information directly to marketers…
#LDS14 As New Sensors Emerge, Risks and Rewards in Location Data
The bulk of location data may come from smartphone’s today, but a new wave of sensors could open up a range of new possibilities for developers and businesses to interact with consumers a given place. During a panel at Street Fight’s Local Data Sumit in Denver Tuesday, speakers from Intel, Qualcomm, and KS Technologies discussed the way chip-level innovations are driving the local tech space, and how new sensors could open up a flood of consumer location data.
How Esri’s Amber Case Plans to Make Technology Invisible
At the Street Fight Local Data Summit in Denver on Tuesday, Esri R&D Director Amber Case spoke about ‘calm technology’ and the future of location data. Case, who sold her startup Geoloqi to Esri in 2012, argued that mobile data should empower people and bring meaning to their lives by making interactions invisible…
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…
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AI Won’t Fix Advertising – It May Scale Its Chaotic Nature