News and Analysis

Street Fight Daily: Legacy Retailers Struggle on Social, Insecurity Over Consumer Location Data

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Can Traditional Clothing Retailers Compete with Digital-Native Brands on Instagram?… SweetIQ Report Highlights Influence of Local Tech on Media Mix… Consumers’ Location Data Is Being Sold Without Their Knowledge…

Chatmeter Report Reveals Keys to Dominating Local Ratings

A recent report by reputation management company Chatmeter shows how retailers focused on in-store experiences and customer service managed to come out on top in online reviews over the holiday season.

LBMA Podcast: Amazon Go, Mobiquity Goes Blockchain, Unacast raises $17.5M

This Week in Location Based Marketing is a weekly video podcast from the Location Based Marketing Association with Asif Khan, Rob Woodbridge & Aubriana Lopez. On the show: Fazoli’s, Trump gets into food stamps, ESRI buys ClearTerra, and Localz.

Commentary

Foursquare, Groupon, and the Market-Making Problem

With Groupon’s filing to go public last week, there has been even more debate over the two-sided market strategy of consumers and local merchants. Another business that has focused on this approach is Foursquare. Is the window of opportunity closing for Foursquare to become the breakout success it could be? The answer depends on how much the company is willing to change its DNA to serve both sides of their market — and perhaps take a few lessons on self-serve and average selling price from Groupon…

Partnership With Foursquare Is a Natural Step for Groupon

Earlier this week All Things Digital reported that Groupon and Foursquare were discussing a partnership to push local deals targeted to location-aware check-ins. The media world has been buzzing about the rumor, but neither company has broken an official silence to confirm (or deny) the partnership or discussions. Perhaps it’s just a foregone conclusion, though, that Groupon would add immediacy and social distribution to its model. In fact it already has…

Where Hyperlocal Meets Digital-Out-Of-Home

The digital out-of-home advertising sector — all those networked screens you see on top of gas pump tops and in elevators, 7-11s, waiting rooms and the back seats of taxis — couldn’t be happier about the rise in popularity of location apps and daily deal coupons. Finally the hyperlocal targeting that is a part of what these networks of screens can do has some consumer-driven energy and contextual relevance behind it…

Latest Posts

In Search of the Checkout Pixel for Local

Until recently, the “last mile” offline had been considered the most challenging step to solve for. But today, it’s increasingly where most of the action is happening. Consideration starts online, but picking up the sushi or the TV, or getting the bridal party fitted, occurs offline — and that involves not just more steps, but also more room for attribution. What was opaque previously is now fertile ground. The race is underway to plant flags at every step and, to make things interesting, with each flag planted consumer behavior is changing…

Street Fight Daily: PayPal’s (New) Way To Pay, AmEx Links To TripAdvisor

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technologyPayPal, Aiming For Retail Ubiquity, Adds One More Way To Pay (ReadWrite)… Encouraging the Reviewers, Honestly (New York Times)… Google Moving Staff From Search To Its Payments Business In A New Push For Google Wallet (Business Insider)…

Constant Contact Rolls Out New Features For Contact Management Platform

Constant Contact has upgraded its contact management platform, integrating the platform with its suite of online marketing tools. Additions to this platform include the ability to monitor growth tactics as well as enabling small businesses to expand their engagement with a “did not open” email report…

How Enterprise Brands Can Localize Social to Boost Relevance and Exposure

By now, enterprise multi-location brands hopefully understand the importance of a local digital marketing strategy to ensure their many locations can easily be found online and help generate local leads. But following the lead of savvy marketers, it’s time they go further and create unique localized strategies specifically for social media. Here are a few of the most successful strategies…

6 Tools Merchants Can Use to Clean Up Location Data

For 42% of adults, search engines have become the primary tool for finding local merchants and service providers. But what those consumers don’t always realize is that much of the information they’re finding can be incorrect or out of date. Here are six platforms helping merchants fight back by cleaning up their location data…

Street Fight Daily: Google Taps Local Inventory, Microsoft Tests Card-Linked Offers

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technologyGoogle Introduces Local (Inventory) Product Listing Ads (Search Engine Land)… Microsoft Forms Alliance With Facebook, LivingSocial And Others To Promote Card-Linked Offers, Starts Test In Seattle (TechCrunch)… Square Doubles In Size In A Year; Now Boasts 600 Employees (GigaOm)…

Hyperlocal Site Xtraxtra.com Re-launches With Focus on Non-profits

Four years after launching, Massachussetts-based xtraxtra.com has re-launched with a focus on benefiting local non-profits and charities. The partnership between the hyperlocal website and non-profit organizations allows it to reward them for bringing in more traffic to the site, while simultaneously generating sponsorship and advertising revenue…

Could Simple Website Builders Be the Next Hyperlocal Superstars?

Where is the next billion-dollar opportunity in hyperlocal? You might be surprised by the likely answer. Assuming they play their cards right, simple website builders like Wix, Weebly or Squarespace — and not the traditional hyperlocal platforms — have the best shot…

In Push to Measure Mobile ROI, Marchex Beefs Up Call Analytics

Marchex, the publically-traded call analytics firm, has released two new products this morning aimed at improving its ability to attribute calls to mobile actions and to determine the actual quality of a call. The move comes as a number of advertising technology firms have launched new attribution services in recent months, scrambling to measure return on investment for an increasingly interested, but skeptical, brand advertiser…

Street Fight Daily: LivingSocial Mulls Ticket Monster Sale, Patch Postmortem In St. Louis

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technologyDespite Hedging, LivingSocial Is in Discussions to Sell Korean Deals Site Ticket Monster (AllThingsD)… Patch’s Closure In St. Louis (And My Closure After Patch) (Ryan Martin)… Operation Clean Air: Clearing Up Misconceptions of Yelp’s Review Filter (Moz)…