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

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…

9 Strategies Merchants Can Use to Protect Their Reputations Online

It’s not uncommon for local merchants to go to the extreme to make a great first impression when customers arrive at their businesses — designing custom signage and selecting window displays with the utmost care — without giving a second thought to the first thing potential customers see when they search for their companies online. Here are strategies that merchants can use to protect their reputations and make a great first impression on the web…

Street Fight Daily: eBay To Expand Same-Day Delivery, Print Revenues Weigh on Gannett

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology…. With Amazon in Its Crosshairs, eBay to Launch Same-Day Delivery for eBay.com Purchases by Year’s End (AllThingsD)… Decline In Newspaper Advertising Weighs On Gannett Results (Reuters)… Small Businesses Shirk Advertising (AdAge)…

Winning in Local Commerce Means Solving the Data Issues in Discovery

The acceleration in the local consumer’s purchase cycle means that each layer of the the Local Stack of online-to-offline local commerce — find, buy, retrieve and engage — must fuse together and work to create a seamless local commerce experience. In the “find” layer, local search properties have expanded beyond point-of-interest data, investing in the rich content needed to help consumers make purchase decisions before leaving businesses’ sites…

6 Tools Restaurants Can Use for Better Guest Intelligence

By the time a guest walks through the front doors at Ping Pong Dim Sum in Washington D.C., marketing manager Myca Ferrer can already be fairly certain what he or she will order. Ferrer isn’t psychic, but he is using a guest intelligence platform to gain a deeper understanding of his most frequent customers. By tracking preferences and payment histories, Ping Pong Dim Sum is better able to offer VIP service to its most loyal diners…

Street Fight Daily: Apple Buys HopStop, RetailMeNot Soars In IPO

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technologyApple Buys 2 Mapping Companies (New York Times)… Coupon Site RetailMeNot’s IPO Soars 32% in First Day (Wall Street Journal)… Facebook Is Testing a Feature That Can Track Customers’ Physical Movements at Businesses (Terra)…

With Digital Video, Newspaper Companies Could Disrupt Local TV

Here’s what I think will happen. The local newspapers that are smart are already getting serious about creating video content. Some of them are beginning to figure out how to get that content to consumers via set-top boxes, and they will be the first to experiment with partnering with companies like Aereo instead of fighting them in court…