News and Analysis

Report: Growth in Convenience Stores Presents Opportunity for CPG Marketers

If there’s one thing that Charlie Lang hopes CPG brands get from Koupon’s report, it’s that the retail landscape is changing quickly, and the convenience store category presents tremendous upside for marketers.

Street Fight Daily: Leave In-Store Shoppers Alone, Google Courts Publishers as Facebook Flails

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… In-Store Shoppers Lean on Tech, Want to Be Left Alone in Stores… While Facebook Battles Fires, Google Rolls Out Pro-Publisher Initiatives… Media Rating Council Considers Bumping up Video Ad Standards…

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

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.

Commentary

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…

Groupon Rewards Is a Positive Step, but Challenges Remain

Launching Groupon Rewards is an acknowledgement of the importance of merchants offering rewards programs. As deal networks look to move beyond deep discounting, expect competitors and new entrants to keep innovating in loyalty…

Freeing Retail Data Will Enable Innovation

If mobile commerce is to move ahead, the current closed structures around offline data will need to to change. Our society’s perceptions of what is acceptable private and public information have changed, and we will need a similar paradigm shift in retail and consumer commerce data provisioning…

Latest Posts

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…

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

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

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

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….