News and Analysis

Report: Google Shopping Ads Taking Over Ad Spend from Traditional Formats

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A new report from search intelligence company Adthena shows how consumers are interacting differently with new advertising formats and points to ad innovation as an essential brand investment.

Street Fight Daily: Duopoly Dominance Declines, Macy’s Rolls Out AR & Mobile Checkout

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… The Duopoly’s Share of the Ad Market Could Decline for the First Time… Demonstrating Where Retailers Are Going, Macy’s Rolls Out Mobile Checkout & AR Feature… The Cambridge Analytica Scandal Won’t Stop Advertisers from Spending on Facebook..

5 ‘Smart’ Shelf Solutions for Retailers

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So-called “smart” shelves are changing the way retailers interact with customers on the sales floor and offering added value to consumer-facing store apps. Here are five examples of smart shelving technologies being used by retailers right now.

Commentary

Understanding the Location-Based Engagement Stack

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The “SoLoMo Manifesto” looks at how brands can use these new technologies and services to learn more about their customers at the local, regional, and global level than was ever possible before…

One Last Round of 2012 Predictions: Deals, Photo-Sharing, and Google Killers

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In the coming year, the big names in mobile local usage (i.e. Yelp, Foursquare) will start to monetize their apps for the first time; U.S. mobile ad revenues will grow 50 percent over 2011, reaching $1.6 billion in 2012; and better targeting and personalization will replace deep discounts as the user “hook” for deals companies…

How Groupon Will Expand in 2012

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As Groupon matures, its path will doubtless expand beyond its core product. Perhaps that’s why I have such a hard time keeping a straight face when people say that Groupon’s model for daily deals is fundamentally broken. It’s not. If anything, their second act has the potential to be even bigger than their first…

Latest Posts

Could Patch Find New Life as a SaaS Platform for Local Publishers?

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At this point, the best path forward for Armstrong to realize his noble goal of delivering high-quality community news might just be to simply throw open the gates and recast Patch as a publishing platform for small and medium-sized publishers…

Geo-Unicorns: Will Local Spawn More Billion-Dollar Startups?

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At the Street Fight Summit in New York a couple of months ago, I moderated a panel that looked at the “Billion-Dollar Opportunities in Hyperlocal.” Our thesis in putting the panel together was that the personalization made possible by location-based technologies was still in its early stages of evolution, and that the “geo-web” will be spawning many of the billion-dollar exits that later-stage VCs crave…

Street Fight Daily: Comcast Resurrects Everyblock, OpenTable Buys Quickcue

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology.EveryBlock Is Back From The Dead (Chicago Grid)… OpenTable Buys Quickcue to Develop ‘Mobile Waitlist Technology’ (Eater)… Farewell, Cash: Starbucks Gets Ready for Latte Thursday (Wall Street Journal)…

JiWire Partners With Datalogix to Ramp Up Mobile Targeting and ROI

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“Where people spend their time and where they spend their money are two very powerful signals for understanding audiences in the context of their daily lives,” JiWire President David Staas told Street Fight. “Our partnership enables marketers to leverage the power of mobile targeting, measurement and insights across hundreds of rich audience segments.”

In-Store Tracking — Privacy Intrusion or Communications Problem?

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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…