News and Analysis

#SFSW18: Closing the Location Attribution Loop

Cameron Peebles, CMO of InMarket, emphasized that data should not just be used for attribution — to prove past ad placements have worked — but also to predict future consumer patterns and increase long-term marketing success. “Consumers don’t live their lives in points; they live their lives in patterns,” Peebles said. 

#SFSW18: The Local Ecosystem in Flux

“Small businesses are people who are gutting it out,” said Andrew Morbitzer, VP of corporate development at GoDaddy. “They’re here to do a service or provide a product. They’re not here to use software. [Our job is] removing the decision to take on another capability.”

Out of Its Rocky Recent Past, Philly.com Seeks to Be ‘Indispensable’

Philadelphia Media Network is building its future around a reorganized and united news operation that aims to produce more engaging editorial content with fewer editors and reporters and sell the package to readers of Philly.com for $2.99 a week after 10 free views. We recently caught up with PMN Editor and VP Gabriel Escobar to discuss this strategy.

Latest Posts

Trover Raises $2.5M to Expand Location-based Photo-Sharing Service

Trover, a travel startup based around location-tagged photos, has announced a new $2.5 million in series A funding. The company says the money will go towards expanding its community, improve the company’s social connections, and refine the website’s content publishing tools…

Broadstreet’s Mission: Liberate Sites for What Matters Most

Serving ads can be a big pain for the entrepreneurial publisher of a small community site. Broadstreet Ads’ mission is to make the pain go away. Then, says Broadstreet co-founder Kenny Katzgrau, the publisher can focus on important things like revenue generation, improving editorial content, and enhancing audience engagement.

Local M&A Activity Hits $7.2 Billion In First Half of 2013

Whether it’s through acquisition or investment, money keeps flowing into the local space. The first half of 2013 saw total investment activity, which includes both M&A and private financing, grow from a year earlier, as the number of deals stayed flat but total reported deal value jumped from $5.2 billion to $7.2 billion over the same period, according to a new report from BIA/Kelsey…

Case Study: Loyalty Program, Targeted Emails Lead to Daily Sales Spikes

At Gelato Fiasco in Portland, Maine, director of marketing and public affairs Bobby Guerette says his team initially developed the company’s digital loyalty program — dubbed the Red Spoon Society — as a way to promote individual Gelato Fiasco locations. What they later discovered was that the card-less program could be useful in promoting the wholesale side of Gelato Fiasco’s business, as well…

Street Fight Daily: Facebook Hits 18M SMBs, eBay Tests Local Marketplace

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technologySecond Quarter Reveals Facebook’s Big Push for Local(Wall Street Journal)… eBay Is Testing A New Local Service Provider Marketplace In The UK (MarketingLand)… Angie’s List 2nd-Quarter Loss Narrows (Bloomberg Businessweek)…

Digitas’ Leary: Brands Still Figuring Out the ‘Right Level of Local’

For brands, mobile has become more than a medium for advertising; it’s an invaluable source of customer data. Brett Leary, VP of mobile at Digitas, talked with Street Fight recently about the need to analyze location in terms of “context,” brands’ budding interest in shopper analytics, and “the right level of local.”

Centzy Brings Rich Content to the World Beyond Restaurants

Consumers are looking to the web to make decisions about nearby services, but the data is often incomplete or absent entirely. A number of companies have emerged to solve the problem, but with only 10% of business posting information online, it’s still a pain point for consumers. One of the newer plays is Centzy, a year-old startup that is looking to bring business’ pricing and store hours online via a self-built crowdsourcing platform….

Hyperlocal Industry Leaders to Gather in NYC on Oct. 24-25

Street Fight, the leading voice of the hyperlocal industry, will host its third annual Street Fight Summit in New York in October, bringing together decision makers and influencers from key areas of local marketing and commerce. Topics will focus on the most dynamic areas of hyperlocal, such as indoor targeting, mobile payments, hyperlocal advertising models, and local commerce strategies…

Street Fight Daily: Uber Looks Beyond Taxis, Foursquare Launches Self-Serve Product

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technologyOn-Demand Everything? Uber Might Steer In A New Direction (CNet)… Foursquare Launches Self-Serve Promoted Listings For Small Businesses (MarketingLand)… Shopkick Adds In-App Purchases To Help Retailers Fight Amazon: ‘We Are The Anti-Amazon Coalition’ (TechCrunch)…

What Local Media Can Learn From the Royal Birth

Who is “royalty” in your community? It’s something news organizations big and small should know, because these are the people who make things happen — or not happen — in and around you. They are of the 1% that we speak of in the widening “us versus them” debate in our culture today. Their comings and goings can be real news, but their social activities and personal lives can also be news…