News and Analysis

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

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

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.

SMB OS Operators: Part II: Slice

Having raised $15 million in funding just last year, Slice is a prime example of what we call SMB OS operators: companies helping SMBs compete in today’s digital economy with a full suite of solutions beyond core advertising and marketing.

Commentary

The iPhone 4S: A Local Voice

Apple’s integration of voice search system Siri into the iPhone 4S operating system has clear implications for local search. Mobile voice search could skew local because of the propensity to use voice when out and about and in “lean forward” mode where local commercial intent is high…

Getting Your Mobile Ad Performance Model Right

With so much activity (and spending) pouring into mobile advertising, there is also a growing demand for new measurement tools. Local SMBs – moreso than even big advertisers – want tangible performance results that demonstrate pre-sales and sales activity…

Beyond the Banner: Using Twitter Posts as Ad Updates

The publisher of CarsonNow.org has created an advertising system that uses Twitter to supply quick updates to ads. It takes the advertiser’s latest tweet and pairs it with a logo image, and displays it like a banner ad. The logo supplies the branding power, while the text of the tweet carries the advertising message…

Latest Posts

Handybook Co-Founder: The Key To Scaling Local Is Great Service

Mobile bookings services are on the rise as consumers look to use their smartphones to do more than find information about local businesses. Enter Handybook, a New York-based technology company that allows users to book household services on its site and app. Street Fight recently spoke with Umang Dua, Handybook’s co-founder, to find out more about the consumer services space and Handybook’s plans to impact the way customers book household services…

6 Tools to Track the Real World Impact of Online Ads

The percentage of companies that analyze online-to-offline interactions is steadily growing — reaching 48% in 2013, according to Econsultancy. As interest grows, hyperlocal vendors are rising to the occasion and refining the metrics they provide. Here are six tools that businesses can use to track the real world impact of their online ads…

Street Fight Daily: Seamless Eyes IPO, LivingSocial In 2014

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technologySeamless Eyeing IPO For 2014 (The Deal)… O’Shaughnessy: Ticket Monster Sale ‘Sets 2014 Up To Be Nothing Like 2013’ (Washington Business Journal)… Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman Takes on Critics in Freewheeling Reddit AMA (Mashable)…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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…