News and Analysis

Survey: Small Retailers Struggling to Compete this Holiday Season

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The holiday season isn’t just an important time for small businesses, it’s the important time. Nearly one-third of store owners say they are completely dependent on revenue earned during this period, according to a new survey by Vistaprint.

Street Fight Daily: Retailers Can Win Big After Christmas, Brand Safety Trips Up Publishers

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Search Data Suggest Retailers Stand to Win Big Week After Christmas… Publishers Find Themselves Caught Up in Brand Safety Nets… Brands Are Learning How to Master Push Notifications Like Publishers…

With Tapad Partnership, Freckle IoT Extends Scale of Audience Data

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Until now, Tapad’s Device Graph has primarily been used by media companies looking to understand and measure their audiences. With this new partnership in place, however, Freckle’s large retail clients will have the ability to monitor consumer behaviors and determine which channels are most successful in driving sales.

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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…

Waze Builds Out Traffic Maps to Add Context in Location

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Andy Ellwood, the company’s senior director of business development, will be appearing on a panel at Street Fight Summit West in a couple of weeks in San Francisco to talk about how the future of mapping tech plays into hyperlocal marketing. Street Fight caught up with him recently to talk about how Waze makes money, the vitality of context, and fighting off Google…

5 Tips For Optimizing Hyperlocal Sites For Tablets

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The real question for hyperlocal publishers isn’t how important tablet readers are, but how best to cater to this group. The publishing standards that work on PC browsers don’t always translate to tablet screens. Here are five strategies that hyperlocal publishers should consider when creating content for readers on tablet devices…