News and Analysis
Street Fight Daily: Amazon & Walmart Disrupt Grocery, Facebook Pulls Plug on Separate Feed
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… With Competition from Amazon and Walmart, It’s Getting Tougher for Local Grocers… Facebook, Diverging from Snap, Decides Separating News from Friends and Media Unwise… Attribution Blind Spots Are Eating Into Your Performance…
Commentary
When Tools Become Channels: Rethinking Local Promotion Distribution
Promotional commerce between small businesses and local consumers is undergoing a massive reconstruction. In the process, media channels are being forced to proactively adapt or wither into irrelevance. Media channels no longer enjoy the spoils of having critical mass in consumer reach and limited competition…
Local Stores Become Showrooms for Online Buying
“Showrooming” refers to the act of using local stores as showrooms for more price-competitive online purchases. Retailers can get on the right side of this trend by beating Amazon at its own data-centric game. That means launching apps — or working with those that aggregate retail feeds, such as Milo — through which personal recommendations and incentives are offered to in-store buyers…
As Facebook Readies IPO, Local Strategy Is in Focus
Considering that 70% of small businesses already use Facebook as a promotional tool through Pages, the company has a serious leg up on the competition. Transitioning these users into paying customers means cutting into Google’s massive market share of local ad spend, and potentially replacing the search giant as the de facto marketing tool for local businesses online…
Latest Posts
In-Store Tracking — Privacy Intrusion or Communications Problem?
As the web continues to expand beyond the desktop, it is infusing itself into the parts of our lives which we’ve traditionally viewed as offline and out of reach, creating an uneasiness among consumers. The question for the technology community is whether users’ fears represent a material resistance by a weary market or natural lag between their concern and the recognition of the value of location tracking which these services will eventually produce…
5 Mobile Ad Tools for Very Small Businesses
Why should the big guys get to have all the fun? When it comes to mobile advertising, most vendors are still targeting their offerings at major brands and brick-and-mortar chains. However, a growing number of hyperlocal vendors are beginning to develop mobile ad products aimed squarely at the small business community…
Street Fight Daily: Patch Not Dead Yet, Amazon Buys Square Competitor
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology.… Amid Postmortems, AOL Says Patch Is Still Alive (Businessweek)… Amazon Reportedly Buys Mobile Payments Startup Gopago, Working On An ‘Ambitious’ New Project (TechCrunch)… Customers Out in the Cold Balk at Uber Surge Pricing (New York Times)…
Mobile Local Media: The State of the Union
The end of the year is upon us and that means top ten lists, year-in-reviews, and predictions galore. Sort of in that spirit but a slightly different format, I’ve been organizing the way I look at the mobile local world into a few buckets. So as this month’s column, here’s my state of the union in mobile local media…
New Ebook Looks at Instagram as a Local Channel for Marketers
Instagram has evolved since its debut in 2010 to become a true local channel, one in which brands can build deeper, more authentic connections with their most devoted fans. A new ebook from MomentFeed, “The Year of the Instagram Strategy,” delves into this topic and provides strategies and real-life examples of how brands like JCPenney, The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, and Disney have successfully tapped into the power of Instagram…
How Hyperlocal Publishers Can Leverage Native Ads
Depending on your perspective, so-called “native advertising” is either a bold new frontier or the re-naming of a tried and true form of advertising — the advertorial. But either way, it is a tool that should be in the kit of every hyperlocal publisher because native ads can deliver content from the native (local) perspective that hyperlocals share with their readers…
Street Fight Daily: AOL Winds Down Patch, Twitter Tests ‘Nearby’ Feature
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology.… AOL Chief’s White Whale Finally Slips His Grasp (New York Times)… Twitter Test Shows ‘Nearby’ Tweets (Wall Street Journal)… Amazon Said To Launch Pantry To Take On Costco, Sam’s (USA Today)…
How Can Low-Revenue Indie News Sites Boost Their Game?
“The ability sell digital ad space efficiently is, in general, becoming an absolute necessity to compete for advertiser dollars,” says Kenny Katzgrau, a co-founder of Broadstreet Ads. “Local ad inventory cannot be an exception. More importantly, the ad inventory of beloved community news sites has a special value that isn’t being optimally exposed to buyers, big or small.”
6 Ways National Brands Can Improve Their Local Campaigns
The hyperlocal technology that brands need to reach consumers locally is available and ready, so why aren’t more brands taking advantage of the opportunity? Only 7% of national marketers say they have effective local campaigns in place, according to a 2013 study by Balihoo. Here are six strategies for helping brands make the most of their local campaigns…
LBMA Podcast: PlaceIQ Partners With Mazda, Amazon’s Drone Delivery
On the show: Singtel soft-launches their shopping app Lyke; PayPal partners with OrderBird in Germany; Texas Instruments patents indoor location; Apple buys Topsy; Tantrum Street launches Cartwheel register. Special guest is Marc Castrechini, VP Software Development of Merchant Warehouse…
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