News and Analysis
Street Fight Daily: Facebook Feed to Demote Pubs and Brands, Amazon Takes it Slow on Alexa Ads
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Facebook to Make Major News Feed Change That Demotes Publishers and Brands… Amazon to Agencies: Alexa is the Future, But We’re Going Slow on Voice Ads… How CES Highlights the Speed of Change for Brands…
Facebook Brings Users to Local Sites — But the Rest Is Up to the Sites
The verdict is in: local news publishers do need Facebook, Google and other giant distribution platforms. But only to get the first part of the job done. Whether you’re a self-funded entrepreneurial pure-play publisher or a corporate chain of daily newspapers, you can’t, on your own, generate all the traffic that the platforms deliver to your site.
Street Fight Daily: Facebook Tests Feed for Local News and Events, Amazon Partners with Toyota
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Facebook Is Testing a Feed Specifically for Local News and Events… Amazon Is Bringing Alexa to Your Toyota… AI Troubles Marketers More Than Any Other Technology…
Latest Posts
The Uber-ization of Local Commerce
Last week, ReachLocal took its new commerce platform for home services, ClubLocal, off of its training wheels, expanding the program into the Bay Area. Pitched as an Uber for home services, the company aims to create a self-service platform to facilitate the booking of home repairs and plumbers — but its execution overlooks some of the dynamics that make some industries, like taxicabs, more fitting to the model than others…
5 Strategies for Tracking Hyperlocal Marketing Success
What merchants really need is a clear-cut way to compare the effectiveness of their hyperlocal marketing initiatives, so they focus their energies on the platforms that work. To answer that question, we consulted with experts from inside the industry. Here are five strategies that merchants can use to track the success of their digital marketing initiatives…
3 Ways Local Search is Helping Preserve Your Brand’s Image
In the increasingly mobile and locally-driven digital world in which we find ourselves, it is an absolute necessity to ensure the visibility and accuracy of your brand’s online identity while constantly working to build and preserve a socially-integrated and supported reputation. At the core of it all is the consumer’s mobile and local search behavior…
Street Fight Daily: Google Close to Acquiring Waze, Why Yahoo Should Buy Foursquare
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.… Google Is Close to Acquiring Waze, a Rival in Maps (New York Times)… Checklist: All the reasons Yahoo is going to acquire Foursquare (Quartz)… Call It Groupon 3.0: Deals giant on a Mobile Mission (Crain’s Chicago Business)…
Two (Big) Things Preventing Local TV’s Collapse
The concept of network content distribution through local affiliates is being challenged by the Web. Local broadcasters are middlemen in the delivery of network content to the masses, and that was fine in a world absent horizontal connectivity. So it would be easy to assume downstream trouble for local broadcasters. But while there’s quite likely much of that ahead, it won’t totally kill the industry. There are two enormous roadblocks standing in the way.
Openings & New Hires at Yext, Appstack, Local Market Launch, and More…
Every two weeks, Search Influence’s Kelly Benish — who knows practically everyone in hyperlocal — covers some of the latest job changes taking place in this dynamic industry. Read about more hyperlocal execs on the move in this week’s Movers & Shakers column…
LBMA Podcast: InMobi’s Piyush Shah on the Mobile Opportunity in China
In this week’s episode, hosts Rob Woodbridge and Asif Khan discuss TuneIn’s $25 million raise to get in your car; Royal Mail opens late so you can pick up your own mail; The Location Forum makes you pay for privacy guidelines; Bud + Blippar + Folds of Honor = amazing; iPourIt brings RFID to bars; ESRI starts licensing their data. Plus, eMarketer Canada offers insight into Canada’s location and mobile advertising landscape and special guest Piyush Shah of InMobi…
Street Fight Daily: Google Wallet Leaking Money, Brand Networks Snags $68M
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.… Google Wallet Is Leaking Money (Businessweek)… ‘Uber For Local Home Services’ Provider ClubLocal Launches In The Bay Area (TechCrunch)… Running Local: Why Facebook Marketer Brand Networks Just Snagged A $68 Million Round(Forbes)…
5 Reasons to Add Gift Cards to a Digital Loyalty Program
Promoting customer loyalty is a broad goal that local merchants are tackling in many different ways. While plenty of platforms utilize mobile redemptions and out-of-the-box rewards or coupons to curry favor with consumers, an increasing number of loyalty providers are moving outside the virtual environment with pre-loaded physical gift cards…
Hyperlocal Sustainability (Round 2): Upbeat ‘Indies’ Say They’re Winning
Following up on my column from last week, here are more unvarnished thoughts from “indie” hyperlocal editors and publishers I’ve been talking to about sustainability (a word, by the way, that sets the teeth of some of these entrepreneurial journalists on edge)…
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Meta Is Automating Ads, But Brands Still Face a Bigger Problem