News and Analysis

Street Fight Daily: Where Mobile Is Heading, Eric Schmidt to Step Down at Alphabet

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Forrester: These Are the Ways Marketers Still Struggle to Understand Mobile… Eric Schmidt to Step Down After 7 Years at Helm of Alphabet… Why Quartz Will Not Be Jumping So Fully onto the Programmatic Bandwagon…

LMA Goes Small to Spread Disruptive Ideas Among Local Publishers

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A recent Innovation Mission to San Francisco/Silicon Valley drew 13 senior executives in the news business (newspapers, TV, radio and research and development). It was built around three themes: audience engagement, platform strategies and using human-centered “design thinking” to solve thorny problems that bedevil most news providers.

Street Fight Daily: Walmart Continues to Innovate, Mobile Video Ad Spend Overtakes Display

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Walmart Develops a Personal Shopper Service and Store Without Cashiers… Mobile Video Ad Spend Overtakes Display… Former Orbitz CEO Joins Uber as the Company’s First COO…

Latest Posts

SMBs Have Some Major Advantages Over Brands in Social Marketing

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Social media is merely a digital extension of local conversations. We talk about the weather, the 4th of July parade, the upcoming festival, local news, et cetera. SMBs need to always be thinking about how they can join/start these conversations in order to build fans, follow leads, offer discounts, improve their reputation and, most importantly, compete with national brands…

For Hyperlocal Marketers, Data Sweeps Are Part of Doing Business

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Marketers operate under many constraints dictated by good business and societal mores, not to mention various federal and state laws against criminal and civil misconduct. But the explosion of public data needs to be sorted out. It’s up to society, government, business and individuals everywhere to take the discussion to better and new policies and, where necessary, laws…

LBMA Podcast: Chuck Martin on ‘Mobile Influence’

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In this week’s episode, eBay turns windows into stores; Shopify turns e-tailers into retailers; The LBMA creates the world’s first human heatmap logo; Wikipedia goes local with content; Rogers partners with FiveStars on Vicinity; Free wifi with Scrabble; Pak ‘n Save makes the shopper the DJ; and local mobile is exploding…

Street Fight Daily: Square Redesigns Wallet, Why Facebook Passed on Waze

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.Square Wallet Gets a Major Redesign (CNet)… In Passing on Waze, Did Facebook Make a Big Mistake or the Right Call? (AllThingsD)… Foursquare Tries To Find Revenue By Turning Your Data Into A Samsung Galaxy S4 Ad (TechCrunch)…

In Rush to Local Services, Thumbtack Nabs $12.5M Series B

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The investment dollars keep flowing for companies in the local services space. Two months after scheduling firm Booker nabbed 27.5 million from Bain, Thumbtack, a startup that has built a reverse Craigslist for local services, has raised 12.5 million from Sequoia Capital in a series B round, bringing its total funding to a little over $18 million…

The NSA’s PRISM Revelations and Hyperlocal Targeting

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Hyperlocal companies rely on the data that consumers knowingly share in order to build profiles and serve them with the most relevant information — but would consumers still assent to this sharing if they truly understood everything that is being done with their digital data?

‘Indies’ and Sustainability: One Destination, Different Paths

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In this final column on the subject of sustainability in independent news sites, two editor entrepreneurs, David Askins, of the Ann Arbor (Mich.) Chronicle, and Denise Civiletti, of the RiverheadLocal on Long Island, talk about what they’re doing to keep their sites healthy long-term. A third entrepreneur, Ben Ilfeld, the CEO of AdGlue, talks about why innovation is so important to success…

5 Tools for Point of Interest Geo-Targeting

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As the technology behind the most popular geo-targeting platforms continues to improve, marketers have begun to refine their tactics to improve the ROI of their campaigns. One of the latest trends in the world of geo-targeting is known as point-of-interest (POI) targeting, or geo-conquesting…

Street Fight Daily: Gannett Buys Belo, Patch Traffic Flat

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.Patch has Proved To Be a $200 Million Money-Suck for AOL and Its Traffic Hasn’t Grown In a Year.(Business Insider)… Why Google Bought Waze (Prioleau Advisor)… ComScore: 4 Billion Local Searches in May (Screenwerk)…

With New Products and Integrations, Belly Looks Beyond Loyalty

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A year and a half after launch, and Logan LaHive, chief executive of Belly, has a clear message for the competition: we’re winning. The Chicago-based company has rolled out new integrations with Yelp and Facebook this morning, marking the beginning of the company’s push to move beyond loyalty toward an open, social CRM…