News and Analysis

6 Vendors Using AI to Facilitate Live Events

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Leveraging artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms, vendors are finding ways to streamline some of the most complex operations—such as estimating the number of attendees and anticipating how many products each attendee will need—in live event organizing.

Street Fight Daily: Publishers’ Facebook Traffic Keeps Falling, Walmart’s E-Commerce Growth Flags

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… As Promised, Facebook Traffic to Publishers Declines Again… Walmart Tumbles As Flagging Online Growth Jolts Investors… Google Chrome Blocks Irksome Ads. That’s Good, Right?…

Raise Report: Unacast, Attentive, Adikteev Score Fresh Funding

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Every two weeks, we round up some of the biggest fundraises taking place in hyperlocal marketing, commerce, and tech. This week’s edition includes funding for 8th Wall, Front, Asana, and Lumi.

Commentary

Why Local Media Can Dominate Daily Deals

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Pundits have been quick to predict the demise of daily deals following the recent news that Facebook and Yelp have scaled back their entries into the market, and that Groupon has delayed its IPO. Rather than buy into this hype, local media need to view this moment as an opportunity to double down and consolidate their positions to capitalize on this important new revenue stream…

Can Hyperlocals Help Solve the Jobs Problem?

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The stock market is falling, Europe is teetering and for many Americans, there are few jobs in sight. On Monday, the National Association of Business Economics issued a report underscoring what many Americans already know: jobs aren’t coming back in any substantial way any time soon. The panel of 52 economics experts said they expected GDP to grow just 1.5% this year, too low to move the needle on the 9% unemployment rate…

Daily Deals 2.0: Card-Connected Offers

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Banks now know more than practically anyone about consumer spending behaviors and they are rapidly entering the digital marketing and local commerce space. Many have rolled out programs that leverage technology to offer customers truly digital deals from merchants of all types via their existing credit or debit cards…

Latest Posts

New Hires and Openings at Ballantine Digital, Linkdex, Centro, and Time Warner

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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 hires and jobs at Linkdex, Gannett, VendAsta, MOGL and LocalVox…

LBMA Podcast: Findery, Esri and Modev Founder Pete Erickson

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On the show: Spindle brings payments to K-Cups in the office; Mozilla launches an open source location service; Tide tries to DOOH up their Halloween Vines; Aptilo launches ad-supported free WiFi in Peru; Google maps Arlington National Cemetery; and Yihaodian launches 1000 augmented reality stores…

Street Fight Daily: Facebook Tests New Ratings, Google Brings Search Offline

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technologyFacebook Tests Out A New Star-Rating System That Could Hurt Yelp (Business Insider)… Google Brings Local Search To Digital Displays Across London (MarketingLand)… Yelp’s New Home Illustrates The Company’s Success (Forbes)…

As Revenue Lags, Groupon Forks Over $260M to LivingSocial for Korean Deals Site

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In Eric Lefkofsky’s largest acquisition since stepping in as chief executive, Groupon has bought Korean Deals site Ticket Monster from LivingSocial for $260 million in cash and stock. The deal, which was announced during the company’s earnings call Thursday, comes as the company posted a wider-than-expected loss in the third quarter due to continued weakness in international markets as well as rapid slowdown in the growth of its goods business…

Street Fight Publishes 2nd Annual ‘Local Merchant’ Research Report

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Street Fight’s “2013 Report on the State of the Local Merchant,” gets up close and personal with dozens of local merchants who shared their desires, disenchantments, successes, and failures in hyperlocal marketing. In a Street Fight survey, 40% of respondents said that “ability to drive new customers” was the No. 1 reason to spend local marketing dollars. Second most important factor was “ensure the right people are being targeted”…

Explainer: How Local Data Startups Are Building Analytics for the Real World

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There’s been a lot of excitement around in-store analytics recently as venture funding has begun to pour into the space. But the trend is one part of a much larger technological effort to quantify consumer activity in the real-world, bringing the same measurement about where we go, when we go there, and where we came from that Google Analytics and Comscore brought to the web years ago…

Revenue a Key Focus for ‘The Brooklyn Game’ Founder

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In his much-quoted report for the FCC, Steve Waldman said that while hyperlocal news sites “do not make much money, they do not need to, because they function more as civic organizations than businesses, relying on volunteer efforts rather than cash.” But Waldman recently told us that The Brooklyn Game, for all its considerable civic presence, is, preeminently, a revenue-driven business where there are no slam dunks…

Street Fight Daily: Square Explores IPO, Google Tests Real-World Tracking

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technologySquare Exploring 2014 IPO With Banks (Wall Street Journal)… Google Takes Its Tracking Into The Real World (Digiday)… The Cost Of Winning: Tim Armstrong, Patch, And The Struggle To Save AOL (Business Insider)…

What Local Publishers Can Learn From Starbucks

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Publishers shouldn’t think about “what thing” they should do to make money, but rather “what experience am I delivering and how can I extend that experience thoughtfully?” If something adds value for readers, adds value for advertisers, and strengthens your other efforts then you should be doing it today…

As Programmatic Buying Gains Steam, Centro Snaps Up SiteScout for $40 Million

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The ad tech company that develops media management software for advertisers has acquired a self-serve advertising platform. The move comes as programmatic ad buying continues to grow in the digital advertising space….