News and Analysis

Sprinklr Launches AI Solution to Help Brands Manage Customer Experiences at Scale

Dubbed Sprinklr Intuition, Sprinklr’s AI tool can process an average of 700 million messages per day across social channels, and it becomes smarter with each customer interaction.

Street Fight Daily: Scandal Fails to Dent Facebook’s Growth, AI Biz Expected to Boom

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Increased Facebook Ad Prices Drive Revenue Growth… Gartner Expects the AI Business Market to Grow 70% This Year… Advertisers, Agencies Agree Transparency in Ad Buying Is A Problem, But Disagree on the Blame…

Makeup Product Reviews

Influenster Launches Solution to Help Brands Leverage Organic Reviews

In a bid to help retailers take advantage of the growth in user-generated reviews, the product discovery and reviews platform Influenster recently launched its own service to continuously supply organic, non-incentivized reviews to brand and retail websites like Walgreens, Target, and Bloomingdales.

Commentary

Deep Data and the Semantics of Local

In the case of local search, there is no prevailing reason beyond lack of attention to prevent the industry from doing a better job of serving the full range of consumer needs. For the time being, industry attention is still directed in a self-fulfilling way toward the activities that have always received attention. This is the safe bet, but safe bets don’t lead to progress…

Aligning Creative and Location to Make Better Mobile Ads

The ability to break creative down to where the consumer is interacting with location is already emerging as the next big trend for mobile marketing. Hand selecting where you want your creative to reach your customer makes a lot of sense — and the more you make it common practice, the more successful your mobile marketing efforts will be…

Why Online Marketers Are Rethinking Their Yelp Strategy

Merchants have historically been wary of Yelp reviews — and for good reason. Yelpers have tended to be snarky and more focused on humor than accuracy. But there are changes coming at the end of 2012 that are likely to make many marketing pros reevaluate their relationship to the user-generated reviews site…

Latest Posts

Foursquare

Street Fight Daily: Microsoft Invests in Foursquare, Target Turns to Chip and Pin

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology.Foursquare Teams With Microsoft for Dollars and Data (Wall Street Journal)… Target Vows to Speed Anti-Fraud Technology (New York Times)… Satya Nadella: Our SMB ‘Ringer’ at Microsoft (Local Onliner)…

An Opportunity for Mobile in the Middle of the Marketing Funnel

The mobile industry has struggled to find its place in a crowded marketing landscape, sandwiched between an entrenched television industry, which controls billions in branding dollars, and a formative paid search sector that dominates the ready-to-buy consumer. But Michael Hayes, the executive in charge of turning UberMedia into a profitable business, believes that the mobile industry could find its sweet spot selling to consumers in the middle…

Consolidation Watch — Where to Look for Deals in Local Tech

The first half of 2013 saw total investment activity, which includes both M&A and private financing, grow from a year earlier, as the number of deals stayed flat but total reported deal value jumped from $5.2 billion to $7.2 billion over the same period. Expect to see more deals — both large and small — in the local space as big firms search for a foothold in the industry and host of maturing startups look for the exit…

Street Fight Daily: FoodPanda Raises $20M, Millennials Drive Mobile Bookings

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology.Foodpanda Gobbles Up $20M In Fresh Funding To Fatten Its Global Pawprint (TechCrunch)… How User Reviews Are Gutting Brands (MediaPost)… Last-Minute Millennials Drive Mobile Bookings, So Make it Easy (Skift)…

Is Guest Blogging Dead? Focus on These Link Building Strategies Instead

While guest blogging used to be a respected link building practice – and still might be okay in some instances – it is now often considered a violation of Google’s quality guidelines. And in the future, Google could penalize websites that accept guest posts if Google believes the business is attempting to gain links without truly earning them. Instead of placing all of your eggs in the guest blogging basket, it is best to focus on authentic link building. Here’s how…

How Merchants Can Create a Comprehensive Strategy for Mobile

Building a mobile-optimized website is certainly a starting point, but it’s far from the last step a local merchant needs to take when developing a comprehensive mobile strategy. Although small business owners tend to be more interested in mobile than outsiders give them credit for, it’s the process of combining those solutions to create a comprehensive strategy that trips many merchants up. Here are six tips for local merchants who are interested in putting together mobile strategies for their businesses…

Street Fight Daily: LivingSocial Posts $183M Loss, Airbnb Considers Cleaning Service

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology.LivingSocial Posts $183M Loss in 2013 (Washington Business Journal)… Airbnb Is Testing Out An Affordable Cleaning Service For Hosts In San Francisco (TechCrunch)… In Defamation Lawsuit Over Yelp Reviews, Neither Side Wins (Washington Post)…

Local Marketing in a Post-Mobile World

An explosion in connected devices is forcing marketers to quickly move beyond mobile and address a new set of multi-device marketing challenges. We recently caught up with Sean Muzzy, chief executive North America at Neo@Ogilvy, to take his pulse on brand marketers’ interest in local, and explore how an explosion in connected devices might shape the way businesses communicate with consumers in the real-world…

Openings & New Hires at Moz, YP, Kenshoo, and Telenav

Every two weeks, Search Influence’s Kelly Benish — who knows practically everyone in hyperlocal — covers some of the latest job changes taking place in this dynamic industry. In this week’s edition, new jobs at Trending.info, Internet Marketing Ninjas, VendAsta, AOL, and Daily Press…

LBMA Podcast: Google Glass on the Floor

On the show: soon your food will text you its expiry date; The Wireless Registry launches; Source Metrics connects online ads with offline buys; Nearbytes lets you pay by sound; Banjo 4.0 hits the street; Ricoh plays catch up with Clickable Paper. And our Mobile Minute with Chuck Martin highlights some store traffic research by Euclid…