News and Analysis

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Street Fight Daily: Amazon & Walmart Disrupt Grocery, Facebook Pulls Plug on Separate Feed

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… With Competition from Amazon and Walmart, It’s Getting Tougher for Local Grocers… Facebook, Diverging from Snap, Decides Separating News from Friends and Media Unwise… Attribution Blind Spots Are Eating Into Your Performance…

Placed Opens Up Location Analytics Platform for Free Public Use

Location-insights powered ad measurement company Placed will offer its location-based analytics and insights to the public for free, the company announced on Thursday.

Reputation.com Acquires SIM Partners

In what is sure to be one of local’s major acquisition deals of 2018, Reputation.com has acquired SIM Partners, the companies announced today.

Commentary

Local Deals’ Second Act: Dynamic, Mobile

In the tech and media worlds, it’s no secret that local deals and mobile are exploding — both in terms of revenue growth as well as in the attention and investment being lavished upon them. Surprisingly, though, the two elements haven’t yet come together to the degree that they probably should…

An Engaged Audience Is Key to Hyperlocal Success

The true value of a hyperlocal site is its audience, but eyeballs alone aren’t enough. To create a thriving hyperlocal site today, an editor needs to attract and hold the attention of an engaged readership. Even more importantly, to sustain a hyperlocal site with limited resources, that audience needs to play an active role in providing and responding to its content.

What’s the Right Ratio of Editors to Contributors in Hyperlocal?

What is the right ratio for the number of editors required to manage a number of contributors? And as the economics of content change and hyperlocal publishers try new models, should that ratio change? Must it change?

Latest Posts

CardFlight Raises $1.6 Million In Seed Round

After launching a private beta of services in May, New York-based CardFlight has raised a $1.6 million seed round to expand the company’s mobile payments platform led by venture capital firm, ff Venture Capital. CardFlight, which provides apps and tools for large and medium-sized merchants, allows developers to incorporate in-person card payments into their own app…

Aisle411 CEO: Retail Will Be the Biggest Opportunity for Indoor Location Tech

The St. Louis-based company works with large retailers and small mom-and-pop shops to use indoor navigation apps to enhance the shopping experience for consumers while allowing retailers to track a shopper’s behavior in-store. In addition to a consumer-facing app, the startup, which raised $6.3 million in September, develops white-label applications for retailers, enabling clients like Home Depot and Walgreen’s to integrate indoor navigation into their existing products…

As Digital Media Gets ‘Horizontal,’ It Acts More Like Local Businesses

Local businesses are the most suited to life in the networked world, because they already deal with people directly, and often on a first-name basis. To the extent that local businesses have learned to do this, they can teach the rest of the business world how to behave in our increasingly collaborative environment…

LBMA Podcast: DoubleDutch, WordLogic Reach, and Gap’s New ‘Three Screen’ Strategy

Welcome to episode #149. On the show: Millennial Media partners with Placed and Neustar and, boom, value is created. Meanwhile, Joingo Places launches (and we wish it would stay just above the stratosphere). Our mobile minute with Chuck Martin focuses on the future of retail search, and our special guest is Cree Lawson, founder and CEO of Arrivalist..

Street Fight Daily: The True Value Of Mobile, Twitter Opens Up

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technologyHow $10 Million Can Lose You $250 Million (AllThingsD)… Twitter Opens Up With I.P.O. Filing (New York Times)… LivingSocial CFO On Ticket Monster: “There Has Been No Transaction” (Washington Business Journal)…

Why Sacramento Press Hit the Wall – And How It Hopes to Survive

“Simply put, we can’t depend on either grants or online advertising to support local news,” says Jared Goyette. “Reader revenue and big sponsors or donors should be part of the picture. I hope we can find a hybrid approach at Sac Press that allows us to keep our client base – we have more than 40 clients and a significant revenue stream – while also finding nonprofit relationships to support our community work. There is no one answer. If I find it, I’ll be sure to let everyone know.”

7 Strategies for Boosting Digital Coupon Conversions

More than 96 million U.S. adults will redeem a digital coupon this year, and nearly half of women ages 35 to 54 say they would like to receive mobile coupons via text. For merchants offering digital coupons, along with the hyperlocal vendors providing this technology, the question becomes how to boost conversions and drive as many coupon redemptions as possible. Here are seven strategies for boosting conversions with digital coupons, presented by experts in the field of digital deals and targeted promotions…

Street Fight Daily: Facebook Expands Wi-Fi Check-Ins, Angie’s List Cuts Prices

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technologyWhy Facebook Is Giving Out Free Wi-Fi For Check-Ins (CNet)… Cheaper Advice: Angie’s List Cuts Prices (Wall Street Journal)… In Test Project, N.S.A. Tracked Cellphone Locations (New York Times)…

JiWire Rolls Out Attribution Product As Mobile Ad Market Zeroes In On ROI

The conversation in the mobile advertising industry has shifted focus in recent months, moving away from targeting toward attribution and measuring return on investment as brands begin to invest meaningful spend in mobile and in turn, expect results. Following a string of product releases from competitors, JiWire, a San Francisco-based mobile-local ad startup, rolled out a new attribution tool called Location Conversion Index this morning, which draws on a similar technique used by competitors to measure in-store visits but allows marketers to normalize those numbers against a wider sample…

Mobile Dominates Local, but Are Wearables the Future?

Confirming a widely held belief, a new study from Yext found that the overwhelming majority of consumers – particularly those in younger generations – prefer accessing local information through a smartphone, even while a desktop computer is within reach. As the mobile market expands beyond smartphones into an array of internet connected devices, the next question for local technology firms is whether a new breed of mobile, and wearable, devices, might generate a similar opportunity…