News and Analysis

Raise Report: New Funding for AxleHire, Digital Genius, Happy Returns

Share this:

Every two weeks, we round up some of the biggest fundraises taking place in hyperlocal marketing, commerce, and tech. This week’s edition includes new funding for SendBird, TrendKite, Rubikloud, and Dahmakan.

Street Fight Daily: How AMP Beat Instant Articles, AI Shapes Brand Relationships

Share this:

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… How Google AMP Beat Facebook Instant Articles… How Invisible AI Shapes Our Brand Relationships… Video-Streaming Service Customers Widely Pan Use of Ads…

Why Even Top Local News Sites Can’t Compete With Facebook on Ads

Share this:

Facebook isn’t going away, and it shouldn’t, for local news providers. But news providers will use their own resources to engage the fraction of traffic that chooses to make its way to the narrow part of the funnel and into the subscription revenue pot.

Latest Posts

With New Ad Product, Placed Connects Dots for In-Store Visits

Share this:

Slowly but surely, technology firms are finding direct links between the ads we see on mobile devices and the places we visit in the real world. Placed has partnered with xAD to launch a new product called Placed Retention, which uses the company’s panel of participating consumers to determine whether a mobile user who was exposed to an ad appeared within a store days later…

Are We Giving Google Too Much Information?

Share this:

While certain groups complain about certain content on the Web, the real danger is always found in that which is not seen, hidden in plain sight within the language that builds that which we can see. Google is the absolute master of doing business where it’s not seen, and I’ve reached the point where I think it’s time we all said “enough.”

Brands Hope to Use Mobile to ‘Conquer’ Competitors’ Locations

Share this:

Mobile-local ad network xAd has released a new report that shows a substantive increase in interest from brands in so-called “geo-conquesting,” the technique of targeting messaging to users at or near a competitor’s location. During the second quarter, nearly one third of every lat-long targeted campaign run on the network included some form of geo-conquesting strategy…

Street Fight Daily: Millennial Media Buys Jumptap, Gannett Merges Agency Business

Share this:

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technologyMillennial Media Snaps Up Jumptap For $193 Million (AdExchanger)… Gannett Dives Deeper Into Agency Business With ‘G/O Digital’ (AdAge)… To Square Up To Foursquare, Yelp Now Lets Users Post Reviews Directly From Its Mobile App (TechCrunch)…

Why Intuition Fails Us in Mobile Advertising

Share this:

When mobile was in its infancy, it was appropriate to use intuition and past experience as a guide for how to run mobile ad campaigns. However, the time has come for us as an industry to evolve and begin to use data and empirical evidence to guide our mobile advertising. We need to test and validate our intuitions with unique mobile data to optimize campaign performance…

5 Tools Businesses Can Use for Predictive Analytics

Share this:

Consumers are creatures of habit, and the behaviors they demonstrate today will oftentimes indicate the actions they’ll take tomorrow. A number of hyperlocal vendors are helping businesses create customer profiles based on in-store activities, purchase histories, and demographics. Now, predictive analytics tools are finally putting these customer profiles to use…

Street Fight Daily: Facebook Partners With OpenTable, Groupon Acquires Plumfare

Share this:

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technologyFacebook To Offer OpenTable Restaurant Bookings Via Mobile (Reuters)… Plumfare Acquired By Groupon (VentureBeat)… How Foursquare’s Dennis Crowley Lost The Narrative To Yelp’s Keith Rabois (Fast Company)…

Keeping Customers Coming Back Through the Power of Data

Share this:

Gone are the days where the only record of a visit to a local business was a credit card transaction, loyalty punch, or cash receipt. Now our activities become user profiles that help real-world businesses to track us — as much to retain their customers as to make that customer experience better suited to the individual and less frustrating…

7 Key Lessons From AOL’s Struggles With Patch

Share this:

Why did a well-heeled usurper to newspapers find itself imploding last week? Ultimately, Patch could still reinvent itself — but if it does not there are plenty of lessons to be learned and applied to all of us working to produce the next model of local journalism. Here are seven…

Street Fight Daily: AOL’s Armstrong Fires Patch Director, Twitter Goes ‘Offline’

Share this:

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technologyAOL’s Armstrong Fires Patch Creative Director During Conference Call (Screenwerk)… Mobile Ads Favor Coexistence, Not Disruption (Financial Times)…