News and Analysis

Foot Traffic Analysis Shows Height of Black Friday Retail Bump

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The 2017 holiday shopping season is off to a healthy start, with consumer spending on Black Friday reaching a record $5 billion. Data from ShopperTrak shows that traffic at brick-and-mortar stores decreased less than 1% from Black Friday last year, which is actually good news compared to what some analysts had been fearing.

Street Fight Daily: Shoppers Swarm to Social, Snapchat’s Redesign Goes Live

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… More Facebook and Instagram Users Discussed Last Weekend’s Shopping than Super Bowl… Snapchat Simplifies Design to Spur Use… Benchmark and Menlo Commit to Sell Shares of Uber to SoftBank…

Mobile Strategies That Retail Brands Are Using to Fuel Holiday Sales

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This holiday season, retailers with physical locations are working feverishly to compete against e-commerce giants like Amazon. Technologies that capture historical, location-based data from devices have become the next great hope for these brands, even as the physical and online shopping worlds continue to merge.

Latest Posts

Street Fight Daily: Google Eyes Waze, Postmates Looks to NYC

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology... Google Said to Consider Buying Waze (Bloomberg)… On-Demand Delivery Startup Postmates Preparing for NYC Launch (TechCrunch)… INFOGRAPHIC: How Location Data Is Being Collected And Transforming The Mobile Industry (Business Insider)…

Report: Brands Can Save Big by Centralizing Local Marketing

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With 99% of co-op dollars spent offline, national brands are missing a massive opportunity to reduce marketing costs and generate leads for local affiliates, according to a new report by Marchex. The study, which analyzed data from past campaigns on the platform, found that by centralizing local marketing campaigns traditionally left to less-savvy local affiliates brands can dramatically improve the impact of their local efforts….

LION President: ‘Indie’ Readership, Revenues ‘Reaching New Heights’

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“There’s no ‘proven model’ other than the precept that local news works when it is just that,” said LION president Dylan Smith. “Every community is different; attempting to cover every town and city by ticking a few boxes in a top-down plan is foolhardy at best, and insulting to local readers at worst – as well as being a great way to lose millions of dollars.”

Case Study: Promoting Loyalty With Outrageous Rewards

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At Vino Vidi Vici, an Italian restaurant in Massena, N.Y., owner Crista Makdouli wanted to offer something extra to help her program stand out. “For 50 [purchases] you can get your name engraved on one of our tables, so you’ll have your own table,” said Makdouli. “For a million [purchases], we will deliver a free Ferrari with a large pizza.”

Street Fight Daily: Yelp Fires Back, Walmart Banks on Mobile In-Store

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.Yelp Fires Back at Small Business Extortion Claims, Says It’s Not, and ‘Never has Been’, true (TheNextWeb)… Walmart Exec: Mobile Can Revive Personal Touch for Shoppers(CNet)… Square Expands into Asia With Japan Launch (AllThingsD)…

Forget ‘Showrooming’: 77% of Mobile Retail Shoppers Buy In-Store

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According to a new study from xAd and Telmetrics, mobile now accounts for one third of all retail activity online with 98 million shoppers using a smartphone in their retail experience. And the vast majority of those mobile shoppers end up making purchases in-store – not on Amazon…

Why Local Media Should Build Search Products to Take on the PurePlays

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In order to appear competitive, most local media companies have formed digital divisions that offer services for local businesses that are available only through deals with pure-play companies like Google, Facebook and Yahoo, which guarantees that a certain portion of the business we generate will always end up in their hands. There simply has to be a better way…

5 Mobile Marketing ‘Musts’ for SMBs

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As more consumers look to their smartphones to engage with business locally, small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) need to lay out a concise mobile marketing strategy. In a Street Fight webinar Tuesday sponsored by YP, Asif Khan of the Location-based Marketing Association, and YP’s David Williams discussed the trends that make mobile a must for SMBs, and highlighted a handful of first steps that local businesses can take to keep up with their smartphone-wielding customers….

Street Fight Daily: Phone Firms Sell Data, A Day in Court for Yelp

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.Phone Firms Sell Data on Customers (Wall Street Journal)… Another Day in Court for Yelp (New York Times)… Hyper-Local: Not A Behavioral Disease (Medium)…

Swipely Raises $12M to Expand Push Into SMB Payment Analytics

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The payments space is starting to settle down. The flow of seed funding has slowed, and a handful companies have separated from the pack, raising meaningful capital over the past year. Add Providence-based Swipely to that list. The payments processing and analytics play has raised $12 million in new funding in a series B round led by Shasta Ventures…