News and Analysis
Facebook Brings Users to Local Sites — But the Rest Is Up to the Sites
The verdict is in: local news publishers do need Facebook, Google and other giant distribution platforms. But only to get the first part of the job done. Whether you’re a self-funded entrepreneurial pure-play publisher or a corporate chain of daily newspapers, you can’t, on your own, generate all the traffic that the platforms deliver to your site.
5 Retailers Tapping Voice-Controlled Assistants for Frictionless Shopping
According to a survey by Linc and BrandGarage, one-in-five retailers already believes voice will be an important channel within two years, and 44% of retailers that are increasing their use of AI say they’re doing so through conversational commerce interfaces, Here’s how five major retailers are harnessing the technology.
Latest Posts
7 Ways CPG Brands Can Leverage Location-Based Marketing
Location-based marketing tools make sense for retailers trying to drive customers into their stores, but what about brand advertisers? Here are seven strategies that brands can use to take advantage of location-based marketing tools right now, even without having their own physical establishments…
Street Fight Daily: OpenTable Tests Payments, New Life for EveryBlock
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology… OpenTable Begins Testing Mobile Payments (New York Times)… Five Months After Everyblock Shuts Down, A Media Company Revives The Product (PBS Media Shift)…
Groupon’s Restaurant Reservation Service Goes Mobile (Mashable)…
Behind Big Retail Brands’ Complicated Relationship With Loyalty
More and more, loyalty startups are looking beyond the SMB market, and to larger brands as a potentially lucrative market with substantially lower sales costs. But, the outcome could be more complicated than it first appears. In a recent conversation with Street Fight, Dawn Maire, creative director at Rockfish Interactive, suggested that retailers might be better acquirers than partners for many loyalty companies…
How the GeoWeb Will Change Consumer and Business Behavior
Digital location-based technologies are now a transformative force for consumers and businesses, particularly when coupled with the rapid adoption of mobile and the growth of big data. I’m a big believer in the future for “GeoDisruption” — the potential for consumers and businesses to interact in fundamentally new ways to take advantage of increasingly precise location-based technologies…
8 Tools For the In-Store Delivery of Mobile Coupons
Sixty-three percent of shoppers say they would be more likely to make a purchase if they received a coupon during their shopping experience. Still, only 27% of companies have plans to implement location-based marketing in 2013. Here are eight straightforward tools that retailers can use to satisfy consumer demand and drum up additional sales with the delivery of mobile coupons…
Sponsored Post: Case Study in Finding a Robust Ad Serving Platform
It is common for large publishers to face a challenge in finding an ad serving platform that is simultaneously scalable, reliable, secure, simple in usage, and can meet the specific needs of a company. After evaluating some alternatives, Wooga decided to start testing Epom’s Ad Server with Asynchronous Tags in a controlled environment to analyze and compare the new Ad Server efficiency. With successful results, Wooga decided to move all advertisement inventory to Epom.
Street Fight Daily: Google Revamps Zagat, Groupon Loses Mobile Chief
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology… 
Google Unveils Revamped Zagat Website, Apps (TheNextWeb)… Groupon Loses Mobile Head David Katz (TechCrunch)… New Facebook for Business Hub Launches With Tips, Tools, Case Studies (SearchEngineWatch)…
Powering the Payment Stream
For years, local search has fed consumers to a technological black hole. The systems on which local businesses rely to manage day-to-day operations have remained offline, relegated to legacy tools or silo-ed in digital products not built for the web. But that’s changing. Thanks to a number of new companies that are reimagining the way consumers shop and reprovisioning the systems that business owners use to monitor and transact the exchange of goods locally, that “source code” is coming online, filling a critical gap in the local commerce stack…
Is Foursquare’s SMB Monetization Here for Real?
The company may discover that SMBs paradoxically prefer the simplicity of flat pricing over relatively complex (albeit more efficient) performance-based ads. The latter requires some degree of ongoing maintenance which challenges non-tech-savvy or time-starved (read: majority) SMBs. This is one reason for famously high churn for SMB self-serve advertising…
Street Fight Daily: Top Patch Exec Resigns, Mobile Payments At Starbucks Increase
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology… Top Executive At AOL’s Local News Business, Patch, Resigns (BuzzFeed)… Mobile Payment At U.S. Starbucks Locations Crosses 10% (TechCrunch)… I’m Still Waiting for My Phone to Become My Wallet (New York Times)…
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